Innovating the Development of New Homes Programs

A utility-sponsored new homes energy efficiency program is a great way  to strategically reduce and control demand. These programs benefit customers by improving the efficiency of new homes on the market while allowing builders to benefit from additional rebates and incentives as a result of better building practices. 

The process of developing an effective new homes program however, is a tedious and difficult task. There are a lot of factors involved, and selecting the specific program requirements as well as the associated incentive amounts are difficult choices to make - made even more difficult because those decisions have huge financial impacts.

A successful new homes program consists of a few key factors, outlined here in our blog titled, “The Anatomy of a Successful New Homes Energy Efficiency Program.” Today, however, we’d like to focus on the financial incentives and reference home planning aspects of new homes programs.

The Challenge

Program managers and their analysts are challenged with determining the best recommendations to include in their program. The end goal of a program is to increase the number of kWh or therm savings for each home; to do so, program managers need to understand the current building trends in an area to then incentive changes to bring the homes above code and increase the amount of savings opportunities. Program managers need to find the most effective ways to reduce energy usage and enhance home performance while working with a limited amount of incentives for builders and raters. 

For example, there is a lot of talk of electrification these days. If you’re a utility operating in a state like Massachusetts, where less than 10% of all homes submitted via Ekotrope in 2021 were all-electric, you may be thinking about incorporating electrification criteria into your new homes program, like the Sponsors of Mass Save’s All-Electric Home Incentive.

For some equipment changes, like adding in a heat pump water heater, it may be an obvious win for the program if you are in a warmer climate as they can also help decrease cooling costs. But, in colder climates, because heat pump water heaters can cool down the area around them, incentivizing heat pump water heaters may be a bit trickier since the heating costs of the building may increase.

Just knowing the number of new homes that are all-electric and what measures are popular does not tell the full story of how to launch a successful program initiative that will yield the most energy savings per dollar spent on the program.

Utilities and utility program administrators have a number of different strategies for determining the specifications of a new program and modeling them. But, in most cases, utility program managers don't have the data or tools to effectively calculate savings between different program measures, or “scenarios”, often resulting in complicated savings calculations and missed opportunities.

There are a myriad of factors that have to be considered and, depending on the current state of building practices in your area, there are many routes you can take to make your program successful and cost-effective.

The Opportunity

What if there was an obvious answer to the question of, “How do I make my program successful and cost-effective?” 

What if, at your fingertips, you had an efficient analytics resource to model and predict the impacts of proposed programs and select measures to incorporate into program requirements? Beyond that, what if you could identify and target specific homes for efficient program promotion boosting both program adoption and cost-effectiveness?

The Solution

Ekotrope’s Scenario Modeling solution, until now has only been available for raters and building product manufacturers. This tool helps raters determine the impact of various specification changes, and raters can analyze whether one change, or group of changes, to a builder’s project plans would be more efficient and cost-effective than another. For building product manufacturers, they can determine the exact impacts that their product will have on a builder’s projects and provide builders with a definitive cost-benefit analysis of using their product.

For utilities and utility program managers, Scenario Modeling can model how any individual or set of changes will impact the energy efficiency performance of recently constructed homes in your territory. Apply the proposed program measures, or scenarios, and evaluate the impact of each scenario and report the individual and cumulative impact on the energy models. 

Scenario Modeling takes all of the guesswork out of developing and implementing a successful new homes program. You no longer need to rely on broad assumptions or spend a lot of time running analyses that often still don’t tell the whole story. 

Curious about how Scenario Modeling can improve your program? Contact us today to learn more about this feature by emailing info@ekotrope.com.