The electricity bill has arrived

Update frequency
It has been a while since I posted anything on this blog (sorry). The reason for this "radio silence" is:

• Nothing has happenend in our "Jahus project". See comments under the heading "Progress"
• No major events in the marketplace (climate/energy)  

Event 1: Electricity bills arrive 
Most norwegian homes have now received their latest electricity bill. There was quite a lot of attention in the press regarding higher energy prices even before the latest electricity bills, but the higher cost still came as a surprise to many families.

"Reducing the electricity bill" has been a more frequent topic around lunch- and dinner tables these last weeks than CO2 and global warming.

Comment 1: This is of course a good thing. Even the global warming sceptics see the need for energy saving efforts - and reducing the electricity bill at home involves extra isolation, replacing old windows/doors, adding a heatpump and balanced ventilation, and of course replacing the oilburner as a heatsource. Most people prefer these efforts to shorter shower-time, lower temperature in the house etc.
                  

Event 2: Energy lables on all buildings

Last week I attended the first seminar (hosted by NVE) on energy lables for buildings in Norway. As mentioned in an earlier blog post these energy lables are mandatory from July 1st 2010 for rent- and sales of homes in Norway.    

The goal of this project is to help the customers (buyers) navigate in the marketplace and select the object with the best value for money - including the projected operations cost.

Comment 2: I believe that this effort will help put emphasis on energy efficiency in homes, but think that we need more incentives to accellerate the adoption of these energy saving efforts in our over 1 million draughty houses. These incentives could be cheap loans from Husbanken (pri 1), more grants from Enova (for example to isolation and blanced ventilation projects), and reduced VAT on typical products like heatpumps, balanced ventilation, isolation etc.  

Progress:
The two top priorities now are:

1. To move the outside portion of the heatpump to a new place where the noise is less of a problem (to where it should have been put in the first place).
2. To reduce the heatloss in the cold attic and therefore fixing the icicles problem

Progress 1: They admit that the heatpump probably should have been placed in the corner outside the bathroom and WC (restroom) from day 1 - away from the neighbors and not on a bedroom wall. We had some discussions, but I have indicated that I can be willing to pay one third of the cost related to this operation (to finally finish this project and "get on with life"). They offered to move the outside portion of the heatpump for a fixed price of 1200 USD (which should be 1/3 of the total cost).

I asked how they planned to do it, are they including the wooden heatpump cover, and where they recommended that it gets moved - they couldn't answer and I am still waiting for the spesifications (we will do X for the price Y).

Progress 2: The Project Leader has previously promised to add more isolation on the ventilation pipes in the attic to keep it cold. He promised that the net result would be warmer air supplied to the living room and no more icicles problems.
   
The ventilation subcontractor and the project leader, however, have had a dispute over responsability for the icicles problem. To prove their point the ventilation subcontractor have placed some monitoring/recording device in the system and I am waiting for the two companies to reach an agreement and deliver what they have promised.