March Program Update

We’d like to share with you an update on the program’s progress. To date we have more than 5,400 people participating throughout our 14 Connecticut Towns.

All of your hard work has really paid off! Together with our 101 community partners, the Neighbor to Neighbor program has completed:
• More than 350 lighting visits, saving almost $40,000 in energy costs;
• 1,545 Home Energy Solutions (HES) visits and 50 HES-Income Eligible visits; and
• 116 energy upgrades, making our homes more comfortable.

New Energy Savings Data

We’ve just recently gotten preliminary savings estimates from the utilities. Based on this data, we can share some exciting results:
• Residents heating with oil or propane are saving an average of 10% of their total energy use, about $390 a year, with Home Energy Solutions and a total of 25% if they follow through and make an improvement. That works out to about $950 a year when you add in an upgrade!
• For natural gas and electric heat customers, N2N has helped homes reduce energy use by about 5% on average through HES, about $250 a year, and a total of 23% including upgrades - or a total of about $475 a year when you add in an upgrade.
• 95% of our upgrades include insulation and 85% of residents who have completed an upgrade heat with oil or propane.

We’ve saved our residents over $630,000 in energy costs each year through all of our work promoting HES and upgrades! And our Energy Advisors have been working with residents and contractors to help more folks follow through on upgrades.

Community Group Rewards Program

Look out for our new community group rewards program! We’ve simplified and improved it to encourage participants to complete home improvements. We’ll donate $200 in cash to every community group whose member completes an upgrade.

New and Upcoming:

• Check out our updated website with a complete list of rebates, incentives, and financing for 2012. You can get money back for wasting less energy!
• Try out our online Do-It-Yourself Assessment, which can help identify energy saving opportunities in your home. We are testing out a related version of this software with our Home Energy Solutions contractors to provide a more attractive and accurate report to participants.
• Our lighting program is ending soon! If you know anyone who wants to save about $125/year through a free lighting upgrade, make sure they sign up for a lighting visit soon.
• Next month we’ll host an online webinar to unveil new data from the utilities showing total electric and natural gas usage in your community by all the residents, business and government entities. This is the first time such data has become available in Connecticut!

We would like to thank our community leaders and volunteers for making Neighbor to Neighbor possible. We are proud to have your continuing support and hope to continue this huge impact in 2012.

Want to get in touch? Please email us info@ctenergychallenge.com or call (860) 372-4405.