For this assignment, I chose to estimate how much energy is used to heat a home in New York yearly. I chose to focus on how much energy homes using fuel oil required to heat the home in a year. To start, I discovered that the average kWh used to heat a home in NY each month is about 602kWh per month. From here, I knew that I would need to multiply this number by 12 to calculate the total energy used in the year. Next, I chose to convert my kWh into Joules so I multiplied this total by the conversion rate.
- \(\frac{602\text{ kWh}}{1 \text{ month}} \times \frac{12 \text{ months}}{1 \text{ year}} = \frac{7,224 \text{ kWh}}{ 1 \text{ year}} \times \frac{3.6 \times 10 ^{6} \text {J}} {1 \text {kWh}} = 26,004,600,000 \text { Joules/year} \)
Through my calculations, I discovered that homes in New York use about 26,004,600,000 joules/year to heat their homes. I am sure the amount of energy used to heat a home in New York is exponentially greater than that of households in warmer regions of the country. Furthermore, I am sure this statistic is influenced by the size of the household and number of occupants whereas smaller homes with fewer occupants see a drastically lower use of energy reflected in their bill. Ultimately, I am interested to find out how I can be more fuel-efficient in my household during the winter and save money.