Central Valley Research Home Program

Central Valley Research Home Program

The research team will 1) set up a "laboratory" of four heavily instrumented, unoccupied homes in or near Stockton, operated to carry out a set of carefully designed and controlled experiments in energy efficiency retrofit measure; 2) analyze the as-found baseline heating and cooling loads and heating and cooling efficiency of the research homes; 3) produce a calibrated simulation model of each home, using the measured characteristics and detailed hourly data to adjust model parameters and algorithms for accuracy; 4) compare energy use and energy efficiency of the homes to simulated energy use of a similar home meeting the Building Energy Efficiency Standards for new homes; 5) develop and validate packages on envelope and HVAC efficiency upgrades for the test houses. The packages will be designed to achieve 50-70 percent savings in heating and cooling energy, using techniques which could be cost effective when applied as a part of a multi-house, optimized upgrade program; 6) develop life cycle cost-effective packages of retrofit measures that save 50-70 percent of the as-found heating and cooling energy use in the experimental homes; 7) develop and test improvements to the heating and cooling energy estimates produced by the Energy Commission's Home Energy Rating System (HERS) software and procedures to identify and characterize alternative air distribution system that are of interest because of their popularity and/or impact on energy use. The primary technology transfer will be via the Title 24 energy efficiency standards and the Energy Commission's HERS staff and processes. Where results and reports will form the basis of changes for future standards.

Stockton

San Joaquin