A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend explaining some of my frustration with California’s energy policy with respect to residential properties. I found it necessary to explain some of the background information in order to adequately describe the issues of concern. Perhaps this is a good time to discuss this in my blog.

I believe my background and expertise are sufficient to lend credence to my opinions on the subject. My educational background includes a degree in physics as well as another degree in “Energy Resource Engineering,” as well as an engineering related MS degree. I ran a successful business as a general building contractor for ten years, and then started an engineering firm providing engineering consultant services to a wide variety of major manufacturers and government contractors in the United States. In short, I have the technical abilities and background to speak knowledgeably about the subject matter of this discussion.

When I “retired” and closed my engineering business a few years ago I decided to look further into the question of energy efficiency in homes and small sized commercial buildings. My interest was spurred by the failure of the HVAC (Heating Ventilation And Cooling) system in my house. Being interested in getting the highest efficiency system as I could, I hired a local HVAC contractor to design and install a replacement system. My requirements were that since I had previously installed a large PV (Photovoltaic) system, I wanted to switch from using propane as my heat source to electricity. I also wanted the system to be design so that the house would be as efficient as practical with regard to energy use for heating and cooling.

The contractor designed and installed a high efficiency, expensive, zoned heat-pump system. It turned out that the system was noisy, uncomfortable, and expensive to operate. The only target that they hit was selling me a “high efficiency” heat pump (although I hadn’t requested a high efficiency heat pump, I requested a high efficiency home).

Having recently “retired” I had time on my hands to look into the issue to see if I could find ways of improving my new system. Over the next couple of years I attended over thirty amazing one-to-two day courses on many aspects of residential energy efficiency presented on for free by the local power company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). The thrust of the courses were how to affordably renovate and improve existing buildings to be more efficient and therefore use less energy. The goal is to modify the existing inventory of buildings rather than just focusing on requirements for new buildings (although the classes definitely apply to the design and construction of new buildings.) The general guidelines for selecting “improvements” is to achieve a short “payback” where energy savings offset the cost of the improvements in less than four years. In most cases the projected payback time is less than three years. This is a very aggressive target – putting strict constraints upon what is within scope of the project. Assuming an average monthly energy bill in California of around $500, and a potential energy saving target of 60%, the improvement projects need to cost need to be limited to around $15,000. Luckily many improvements have payback times of less than a year, and some result in immediate savings over what would have been spent if nothing were changed.

The subject matters ranged from modeling the energy use of buildings, design and installation of HVAC systems, lighting, swimming pool filter pump energy, weatherstripping, ventilation requirements, insulation and sealing of buildings, and much more. These were an amazing mix of classroom and hands-on instructions presented by highly qualified instructors. (For the first couple of years they we were even provided with free breakfasts and lunches. Unfortunately, that practice has been stopped – now you have to pay for your meals.)

I thought this was going to be a series of “refresher” courses for me since I already had a BS in residential energy aspects, as well as a degree in physics to back up my understanding of the processes being discussed. As it turned out, while I already had a strong grounding in the principles, I didn’t have the hands-on expertise or computer modeling skills necessary to address the entire building as an “energy system.” I learned about testing, installation, equipment selection and design, material selection, and computer modeling tools.

What they said during these courses amazed me. The general idea was pretty simple. All you have to do is understand how the building system works, what to do to make it work better, and fix it. While this is an obvious goal, the devil is in the details of how to accomplish this.

My first reaction to their claims was that they were impossible. How could you possibly do anything with a payback of less than four years without drastically reducing the “goodness” of the solution? I decided to test it by following their recommendations and seeing what happened. Toward this end I re-applied for my general contractor’s license so I could legally contract with homeowners to “fix” their homes. This required that I not only become licensed, but I also had to purchase thousands of dollars worth of testing equipment and specialized tools to be able to properly test and verify that my work met the efficiency goals.

It turned out that they were correct – it is not only possible to achieve a 60% or more energy savings, but it is achievable with existing technology and readily available low cost construction materials. The general approach is to seal the air leaks between the living space and the attic and underfloor spaces, install adequate insulation in the attic and underfloor spaces, measure and model the energy use of each room throughout the year and then design a system that meets the modeled energy demands. Things like changing to high efficiency windows or fixing wall insulation weren’t considered because the payback time for these types of improvements is generally over ten years (and sometimes not even being achievable). However, there are often non-financial reasons for replacing old windows, including sound deadening, appearance or the control of drafts. I am not saying that it isn’t a great idea to replace old single pane windows, but doing so doesn’t save enough to pay for the windows (one of the criterion for making energy efficiency improvements).

I selected customers that were going to replace a failed HVAC system. HVAC systems typically last about 15 years, so in a town of 50,000 people there might be 17,000 homes (3 people per home), resulting in over 1000 replacements a year. Typically what happens is that the failed system is replaced by an identical unit, perhaps a new high efficiency one instead of the original “low efficiency” model. A typical quote was around $18,000 to just change out the unit. If instead of doing this, the building efficiency is improved then the HVAC unit can be made MUCH smaller, and therefore much less expensive. The change should result in changes to the duct system, but these changes are almost never considered because it adds cost. The units that I installed ended up costing about $8,000 installed, including all new ducts that worked with the newly sized system designed to work with the newly improved house. When the costs of fixing the insulation and air sealing are included, the overall cost is usually around $10,000, for a savings of around $8,000 from just replacing the original unit. I then install $8,000 worth of solar, because of the energy efficiency improvement typically achieve net zero energy use for the building. My systems cost about the same as a simple replacement of the failed unit, but often save the entire energy bill for the home. I consider this a “free” improvement since it is just using the money that would have been spent to replace the failed unit. Zero energy use for a zero investment sounds like a pretty good deal to me. This is far better than a four year payback period, it is an immediate payback – with an effective infinite return on investment.

You might ask why not just install a bunch of solar and not bother with all of the HVAC and insulation changes. The first answer is that while this approach can achieve “net zero” energy use, the amount solar required is about would cost something like $20,000-$25,000 on top of replacing the HVAC – so this approach costs a lot more. In addition, the newly designed house will be MUCH more comfortable. When I did this to my house in the very hot Sacramento Valley region of northern California, I found that the increased insulation resulted in my air conditioner only running from about 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm instead of starting up at 10:00 am and running to around 8:00 pm as it used to do. I can easily go all day in the middle of summer without any AC – meaning that I use no energy for cooling the building. Winter heating is similar, it takes a few minutes to knock off the chill in the morning, and then typically the winter sun is sufficient to keep the house warm throughout the day, and it is usually unnecessary to run the heater at night.

There are advantages beyond just cost savings. Several of my customers exclaimed that rooms that were unusable because they were either too hot from a southern exposure to the sun, or too cold in winter, become usable – adding extra room to their house for free. In addition, there is the impact on the electrical grid that should be considered. While Net Zero is the goal, that does not mean that it works without the electrical grid which essentially works like a giant battery leveling out the solar production and building use – there isn’t much solar at night or stormy weather, so power comes from the grid. However, reducing the energy needs of the building through energy efficiency improvements requires a smaller contribution from the grid, and hence results in a savings to the grid and therefore the overall infrastructure costs – resulting in improvements to the global power situation.

If this is such a great idea, why isn’t it being implemented everywhere? Good question – I am not sure. As far as I can tell if this were vigorously pursued it could reduce the electrical use in California to about 40% of the current use in around 10 years at zero cost. There are many forces acting against this change. Part of the problem has to do with short sighted government regulations concerning requirements for energy improvements and permitting costs. While it is possible make the necessary changes within the current building codes, it is tricky to do so – requiring engineering evidence of achieving the energy goals instead of just blindly following the prescriptive approach.

It appears that the biggest stumbling blocks for making these huge changes to the energy demands come from the utilities and the laws that their lobbying create. They are in the business of selling energy. If the demand drops by 60%, so will their revenue. It isn’t a situation where costs and benefits drive the decisions, rather it is a situation where a huge monopoly (the utilities) control the market and the laws effecting the market.