Building Industry Research Alliance – Led by ConSol
The Nation’s 113 million households and over 4.7 million commercial buildings consume approximately 38.8 quadrillion Btu (quads) of energy annually, nearly 40% of the U.S. total. This makes the building sector the largest sectoral energy consumer. Within the building sector, residential buildings use the most energy -21% of the U.S. total, while commercial buildings use 18%. The Building Industry Research Alliance (BIRA), a Department of Energy (DOE) Building America Program team that includes GE, will provide means and methods to significantly reduce the total U.S. annual energy use and electricity-grid peak loads. These reductions will result in reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in the electricity grid’s stability.
Almost ten years ago, ConSol started a journey towards “Zero Energy Homes” (ZEH) under a contract with the DOE in their Zero Energy Homes Program. This program was funded through the solar office of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office at DOE. There were four teams nationally and three of the four each built a single demonstration home. The homes were designed to come as close to producing as much energy as each home used in a year – now fondly known as “net-zero energy homes”. This was done by building as efficient a home as each builder was willing to finance and then installing a large amount of solar electric panels. ConSol took a different approach – the ultimate goal was to move the building industry toward zero energy homes, and to do this, we reasoned, we needed communities of marketable, very energy-efficient homes with PVs. ConSol assisted a few builders in using readily available energy-efficient technologies to make the homes significantly more efficient at an affordable cost, and installing relatively small PV systems (about 2,000 Watts AC). ConSol set a target that the communities would have at least 60% lower energy bills, reasoning that savings in excess of 50% would be significant and attractive to buyers. These communities were marketed as “Zero Energy Home Program Homes”, and they sold as well or better than competing homes with much larger energy bills. In fact, on average, these zero energy homes saved more for their buyers in energy costs than the increase in the mortgage to pay for the improvements (when & where rebates were available for the solar) – so they produced positive cash flow for their owners!
Several such ZEH communities were built, and each was successful; the largest single one had 287 single- family homes and a large multifamily complex. Within a year of starting work on the Zero Energy Homes Program, there was a new request for proposals for the Building America program. ConSol assembled a team and was one of the teams selected. Like others working in the energy-efficiency field, we had found it difficult to get builders to build highly energy efficient homes, due to first-cost issues, coupled with difficulties in marketing such homes – they were more comfortable, of higher quality, and could be cost-effective (positive cash flow), but they looked the same and were typically more expensive than code homes. However, in our ZEH-program work we had found that the solar and the ZEH logo garnered a lot of attention and helped sell the homes. BIRA, the ConSol-led Building America team, expanded our energy-efficiency and solar approach into the Building America program. The Building America leadership and other teams were at first very reluctant to embrace this approach, feeling that PVs did not belong in the program due to their high cost, compared with energy efficiency improvements.
The Building America Program (BAP) is run out of the Buildings Office, and Congress became concerned about the existence (funding) of two programs (ZEH and BAP) that targeted highly efficient homes, and they zeroed the ZEH budget. The ZEH program and its goals were expected to either be dropped or merged into the BAP goals. The programs were merged, and BIRA strongly promoted solar as an important component of the Building America program to improve marketability of highly-efficient homes. The merger of these two programs within DOE resulted in a change of the BAP program goal to create affordable, marketable ZEH strategies that builders can use to build super energy-efficient homes with PVs, and ultimately actual net-zero energy homes in all five BAP climate areas, covering the US.
About this time, BIRA was collaborating with GE, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) and Premier Homes to build Premier Gardens. This community, along with the neighboring “SMUD Advantage” community, which acted as a control, became the most studied BAP community ever. Premier Gardens demonstrated persistent energy and bill savings (50% – 60% compared to the average of the control community) as well as real and persistent demand reduction from both the efficiency improvements and the GE Gecko solar systems. It was also noted that the Premier Gardens community started sales about a month after the neighboring community and sold out about a month earlier, further demonstrating consumer interest and their possible preference for efficient, solar homes.
This Spring DOE released a new request for proposals for the BAP, and GE teamed with BIRA, along with other new partners on a new proposal for new research in efficiency and solar improvements in both new homes and existing home retrofits. BIRA was one of the winning teams, and proposed to evaluate a new low-cost solar retrofit product, coupled with GE Demand-Responsive appliances that can communicate with the Smart Grid through the GE Home Energy Manager. This research could be ground-breaking in demonstrating how communities with smart appliances, and consumers enabled by the Home Energy Manager, can reduce peak loads on the local distribution system and the grid. This should be of great value to utilities, and BIRA, in partnership with GE and others will work with the utilities to determine the value, and how this value could be used to transform the utility business from its current, difficult to manage, unintelligent grid with severe peaking events, to a “smart” grid with both distribution and grid intelligence that can result in improved management of grid loads, lower peak events, reduced emissions, and greater grid stability.
[1]2008 Building Energy Data Book, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Planning, Budget and Analysis, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.Prepared by D&R International, Ltd., September 2008.
I admire the program you’ve developed, but I am more interested in learning about solution you have for existing homes. My utility is San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E). The article I read said that you were working with them as well as others. can you direct me to someone would have advise on what is available for my situation?