Levels of energy monitoring in houses.

Describes improvements made in the monitoring of energy consumption in housing in the past decade. Covers the highly instrumented townhouses monitoring of Twin Rivers in the early 1970's, using more than 50 channels of data recording, with appropriate sensors. This has led to simpler systems used to evaluate energy savings following retrofits. In 1977-78, 3-channel utility demand recorders were upgraded to a 12 channel capability, and this worked successfully on more than 30 townhouses. Nowadays microcomputer-based systems are used (including one for air infiltration measurement) and many of the calculations are performed on site. A third level of monitoring involves the house visit, the house doctor's approach and the use of a wide variety of diagnostic instruments.