BIG Wins MF Zero Net Energy Research Grant

BIG and its research partners will optimize approaches to designing and constructing multifamily buildings that produce as much energy as they consume—through the use of on-site renewable energy and breakthrough all-electric technologies for water heating and HVAC. Four affordable housing ZNE demonstration projects in California will offer opportunities to investigate these approaches in-depth and create comfortable and healthy homes for low-income residents. “As a green building leader and innovator, Build It Green is thrilled by this opportunity to advance ZNE best practices and show multifamily developers that ZNE is both achievable and cost-effective,” said Karin Burns, Build It Green CEO. “This research project will be critical to helping the state of California meet its goal to make ZNE the standard for all new residential construction by 2020.” Our Research Team BIG will lead an all-star team of researchers, coordinated by Senior Technical Manager Amy Dryden. Nehemiah Stone of Stone Energy Associates, a leading expert on multifamily energy efficiency, will serve as Principal Investigator. The Association for Energy Affordability, Redwood Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and NEXI will contribute critical expertise for data collection and analysis. The four all-electric, ZNE demonstration projects—in various stages of design and development—are being provided by the Corporation for Better Housing (CBH) and Resources for Community Development (RCD). The research project will demonstrate the potential of innovative heat pump water heating and HVAC technologies as a pathway to ZNE, then go a step further to explore the complex, interdependent systems in a multifamily building to show how they can work together to achieve ZNE in a cost-effective manner. “California’s ZNE goal is approaching rapidly, yet a host of key ZNE design and building science issues remain poorly understood for multifamily developers,” said Bruce Mast, Build It Green’s Chief Innovation Officer. “Our research will help establish design and installation best practices that minimize risks for developers and accelerate the market toward ZNE. We need to ensure that all the potential benefits of ZNE are fully realized, especially persistent cost-savings and greenhouse gas reductions.” Technical Details and Project Goals The BIG team will achieve the following design and planning research goals:

• Lower the costs for building multifamily developments to ZNE standards.
• Lower GHG emissions by field-testing 100% electric solutions for cost-effectively achieving ZNE standards.
• Improve electricity reliability by demonstrating load-shifting solutions that increase the energy self-sufficiency of multifamily ZNE developments.
• Reduce planning uncertainty by reconciling design and actual performance for advanced systems and developing new methodologies for quantifying their benefits.