Energy impacts of effective range hood use for all U.S. residential cooking

Abstract

Range hood use during residential cooking is essential to maintaining good indoor air quality. However, widespread use will impact the energy demand of the U.S. housing stock. This article describes a modeling study to determine site energy, source energy, and consumer costs for comprehensive range hood use. To estimate the energy impacts for all 113 million homes in the United States, we extrapolated from the simulation of a representative weighted sample of 50,000 virtual homes developed from the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey database. A physics-based simulation model that considered fan energy, energy to condition additional incoming air, and the effect on home heating and cooling due to exhausting the heat from cooking was applied to each home. Range hoods performing at a level common to range hoods currently in U.S. homes would require 19–33 TWh (69–120 PJ) of site energy, 31–53 TWh (110–190 PJ) of source energy; and would cost consumers $1.2 to $2.1 billion (US$/2010) annually in the U.S. housing stock. The average household would spend less than $15 annually. Reducing required airflow (e.g., with designs that promote better pollutant capture and have more energy saving potential, on average, than improving fan efficiency).