EEBA's High Performance Home Blog

On May 9, the California Energy Commission voted to mandate advanced efficiency measures and rooftop solar for all new houses, condos and apartment buildings (up to three stories tall), obtaining building permits after January 1, 2020. If a building isn’t suitable for a rooftop array, it will be required to have access to community solar or offset energy usage through alternative efficiency gains. Builders can also take advantage of “compliance credits” by installing batteries like the Tesla Powerwall or sonnenBatterie - and further reduce the size of the solar array.

As California builders, raters, analysts, and architects seek methods and solutions to meet this aggressive state policy, part of this year’s High Performance Home Summit will be aimed at putting all the information California builders need in one place, to help you reach the goal of compliance in time. Various classes will be offered revolving around the impact of policy, code, and Title 24 on design and construction.

• Zero Made Easier – Simple Solutions from Award-Winning Builders of DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes.  This presentation provides a compilation of the techniques used by award-winning builders in DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Home Program to achieve HERS scores of zero and lower. It will show several specific examples of techniques developed and used by builders as they strive for zero energy ready homes. Construction methods used in Zero Energy Ready homes are compared with those used in just-to-code new homes and existing homes for key components like wall assemblies and HVAC systems. The path to zero offered by the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program is described with overviews provided for national and new California-specific criteria. Presented by Sam Rashkin, Chief Architect, DOE Building Technologies Office, and Theresa Gilbride, PNNL.

• ZNE Homes for All:  Perspectives from ZNE Homeowners Who Don’t Know What ZNE Is.  This presentation will give an overview of Southern California Edison’s involvements with ZNE homes in the California market, and will share how SCE has worked with industry leaders to unearth meaningful analytical findings as well as anecdotal insights. Perspectives from willing homeowners will be shared to shed light on the ZNE market at large. Lastly, in this presentation, SCE will describe how this information and work are being used to refine existing customer offerings, and to broaden customer participation in a collective clean energy future to help meet the state’s aggressive and visionary climate action goals.  Presented by Will Vicent, Southern California Edison.

• Lessons Learned from the Greenstone Net Zero Demonstration Home.  This presentation will present the Greenstone Homes Net Zero Demonstration project and the lessons learned in moving a production builder to Net Zero Home building practices. In 2017, Greenstone Homes collaborated with Mitsubishi and Lifebreath to do a Net Zero Demonstration home that was certified as a DOE Zero Energy Ready Home with a solar array. Greenstone Homes made simple modifications to a standard home plan and was able to build a Net Zero home for less than 10% cost increase from its standard build. With the new Net Zero home building requirements in California, projects like this are valuable to show that Net Zero is achievable by production home builders with some simple and affordable modifications to standard building practices.  Presented by Greg Davenport, Mitsubishi Performance Construction Team.

Take a look at all of this year’s session descriptions and join building professionals in markets all over the country at this year’s High Performance Home Summit in San Diego.