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are the baseline for the performance of new homes. The most recent update of these standards went into effect in 2005. 1.1. Objectives The California Energy Commission decided to sponsor a Zero Energy New Homes program based on the successful federal BA program, but with more stringent requirements. The Utility-focused Market Model for ZENHomes project created under the Zero Energy New Homes program focuses on building sustainable markets ZENHomes, rather than on technology development. Therefore, this does not overlap or duplicate DOE’s current work, but rather, builds upon the existing research. This report documents the activities performed under the Utility-focused Market Model ZENHome project. For this project, the contractor will: • Evaluate case studies of highly efficient residential design projects with photovoltaic systems and assessing the elements that contributed to their successes and failures • Assess lessons learned from the federal ZEH program—in areas such as construction protocols and practices, avenues to acquire incentives to lower builders’ cost, marketing and media exposure, collaborative partnerships, competitive sales, and enhanced reputation and positive exposure—to facilitate and improve upon the concept of ZENHomes under the Utility-focused Market Model ZENHomes project • Provide recommendations to the Energy Commission to modify the goals of the Utility-focused Market Model ZENHomes project as needed to ensure success within the context of real-world constraints 1.2. Building America Program The Building America program is a private/public partnership sponsored by DOE that conducts research to find energy-efficient solutions for new and existing housing that can be implemented on a production basis. The program combines the knowledge and resources of industry leaders with DOE’s technical capabilities to act as a catalyst for change in the home building industry. BA work focuses primarily on the development and integration of technologies into the ZEHs, development of rate structures to promote demand response, and development of controls to implement demand response. These activities focus on creating technology, rather than on creating markets. The BA program helps builders to build communities that will generate as much energy as they consume on an annual basis by the year 2010. Currently, seven BA teams are active across the nation, with each team responsible for certain climate zones. The Building Industry Research Alliance (BIRA) team, led by ConSol, is responsible for the marine and hot-dry climate zone which includes California. BIRA’s work with production builders to achieve this goal is discussed in the next section. DOE’s BA program uses a systems engineering approach to produce homes on a community scale that: 4
• Reduce energy use by 40% to 70% • Reduce construction time and waste • Improves productivity • Provides new product opportunities • Implements energy-and material-saving technologies The goal of the BA teams is to increase the requirements each year to achieve an annual zero energy bill by 2010. A home can achieve a zero energy bill by building with today’s technology. However, such a home would be very expensive, and builders are reluctant to take this approach. The gradual approach of BA is a far more palatable proposition for builders, who can choose to build ZEHs in one of three ways: • As an option, leaving the sales agent to sell the benefits of ZEH • By building a designated number of pre-plotted lots to ZEH standards • By building the entire community to ZEH standards There are positive and negative impacts to these three options, which will be discussed in the case studies section of this report. 1.3. Building Industry Research Alliance The Building Industry Research Alliance team, a diverse coalition of 31 industry partners, is the newest coalition to join the BA program. From its large BIRA membership, a core design-team will work with builder partners (and other interested builders) to develop and modify home plans to make them more resource efficient. The full BIRA team meets periodically to review progress and provide input and constructive criticism of the design team’s efforts and results. BIRA’s goal for the ZEH program today is to promote houses that reduce the total energy bill by at least 60% and produce as much electricity as they consume annually. BIRA core design team activities include the following: • Studying builder's market demographics • Performing systems analyses of home designs to optimize energy saving features and construction practices • Constructing prototype homes • Evaluating the design, construction practices, and operation of prototypes for cost and performance • Improving the design and construction practices in either additional prototypes or in full community implementation. Collaborating with builders, BIRA has overseen the construction of approximately 700 ZEHs in California (including five ZEH communities), two ZEHs in Las Vegas, Nevada, and one ZEH in Oakridge, Tennessee. Some of these projects incorporate such innovative technologies as: • DOW’s T-Mass wall product, which effectively uses the thermal mass effect of concrete to create an “equivalent wall performance R-value” several times greater than that is estimated by a traditional material R-value calculation 5
Page 1 and 2: UTILITY-FOCUSED MARKET MODEL FOR ZE
Page 3 and 4: Preface The Public Interest Energy
Page 5 and 6: List of Figures Figure 1. BIPV exam
Page 7 and 8: Introduction Executive Summary As C
Page 9: 1.0 Introduction As California’s
Page 13 and 14: In addition, utilities typically ha
Page 15 and 16: to continue to build more homes wit
Page 17 and 18: Duct insulation/location R-4.2 11 B
Page 19 and 20: Figure 1. BIPV example As a key req
Page 21 and 22: Both Premier and Cresleigh construc
Page 23 and 24: $250 $240 $230 $220 $210 $200 $190
Page 25 and 26: 2.2. Case Study #2: Clarum Homes -
Page 27 and 28: mid $300,000, and the ZEHs sold jus
Page 29 and 30: The Fallen Leaf project just comple
Page 31 and 32: 2.5. Case Study #5: Pardee Homes -
Page 33 and 34: Figure 13. Soleil plans Appendix C
Page 35 and 36: project in Rancho Cordova (two side
Page 37 and 38: One of the lessons learned is that
Page 39 and 40: 4.0 Recommendations for the Energy
Page 41 and 42: 6.0 References Burton, Franklin. 19
Page 43 and 44: W watt ZEH zero energy home ZENHome
Page 45 and 46: Appendix A: Energy Analysis for Pre

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