Whole Buildings

Definition

This category covers components, systems, or controls with integrated approaches to save energy that differentiate them from other TPM technology families. It also includes a single product — or coordination of multiple products — that can serve multiple end-uses, as well as integrated packages of measures, such as electrification packages with envelope improvement measures. Examples include weatherization and air leakage sealing, integrated designs such as thermally activated building systems, or broadly grid-interactive efficient buildings. The measures can be installed as existing building retrofits or in new construction.

Research Initiatives

Research Initiatives	Performance Validation Needs	Market Analysis Needs	Measure Development Needs	Program Development Needs
Multifunction residential and small and medium commercial heat pump technology that reduce barriers to adoption
Equipment or product solutions that reduce barriers to adoption
Controls solutions that reduce barriers to adoption
Equipment and controls that use open frameworks for interoperability
Building design methods and practices to integrate systems

Opportunities

Opportunities for study for this technology family include, but are not limited, to:

• The development of efficiency measures or strategies that integrate or replace multiple, single-function technologies, resulting in energy savings, improved performance, and reduced deployment costs.
• The study of integrated systems that reduce barriers and costs by providing electrification with large energy savings and improving affordability. Examples of multiple systems include:
  • Integrated lighting and space cooling system that reduce the total number of installed sensors in a building.
  • Residential integration of home area networks with smart appliances and smart load coordination (panels, breakers, circuit sharing).
  • Heat pumps that integrate space conditioning and water heating or other loads that are typically separate.
• Low-cost retrofits that modify or add equipment to leverage existing building infrastructure for energy savings. Examples include:
  • Add-on nighttime ventilative cooling.
  • Add-on passive solar shades.

Barriers

Potential studies of barriers may address:

• Integrated systems can be significantly more complex. They may span multiple building systems, and typically require a greater level of design, assessment, installation skill, and more complex maintenance.
• The path for integrated systems efficiency measures to become deemed measures may be more complex, potentially including multiple load shapes.
• Barriers to adoption include:
  • Lack of interoperability among software programs in controls systems.
  • Lack of open communication protocols for controls equipment, particularly for small and medium residential and commercial buildings.
  • Lack of field performance data, including system reliability, energy performance, and cost-effectiveness.
  • Lack of maturity of system efficiency testing and ratings, particularly for combination heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and water heating (WH) products.
  • Lack of software tools for designers to quickly model and assess system performance and costs for integrated systems.
  • Lack of standard methodologies for estimating savings of integrated systems.
  • Lack of a standard applicable baseline for new systems that integrate new functionality that did not apply to previously existing systems.
  • Lack of deployment infrastructure or workforce for integrated systems; need for better understanding of resources available for designers, installers, and maintenance strategies.
  • Default settings are often left unmodified, meaning systems may never achieve optimal performance, especially as the building’s use and characteristics change.

CalNEXT Related Projects

• Lab Evaluation of Integrated Controls for Commercial Buildings
• Residential Multi-Function Heat Pumps: Product Search
• Residential Multi-Function Heat Pumps: Heat Exchanger Improvement
• Residential Multi-Function Heat Pump Laboratory Testing
• Lab Test of a Variable Speed Air-to-Air Multi-Function Heat Pump
• Multi-Function Heat Pump Research Home Test – Variable Speed
• Residential Multi-function Heat Pump Market Study

Definition

This technology family refers to single- and multi-structure sites that use a common utility connection; it encompasses electrical infrastructure site needs and capabilities to enable energy efficient and low- or carbon-neutral buildings, demand-flexible end uses, distributed energy resources (DERs), and grid harmonization.

Research Initiatives

Research Initiatives	Performance Validation Needs	Market Analysis Needs	Measure Development Needs	Program Development Needs
Interoperability of building management system with microgrid controllers
Interoperability of smart panels with distributed energy resource (DER) gateways
Interoperability of home area networks with smart panels
Impact of integrated energy storage systems on residential electrical infrastructure
Electrification enabled by panel or circuit level load management devices

Opportunities

Opportunities for study within this technology family include, but are not limited to:

• Studies on different panel replacement options, such as upsizing, power-efficient alternatives, and National Electric Code calculation alternates.
• Improved resilience and load prioritization through load segregation and panel controls.
• Small-scale and temporary or mobile power storage systems based on 120V power grid.
• Replacement and improvement of ageing transformers to improve efficiency and electrical load capabilities.
• Integration of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) strategies with existing electrification and transportation emerging technology projects on this subject.
• Demonstration of the integration of a battery storage system into the electrical load panel that houses the elevator motors in a high rise building as a means of reducing demand charges caused by elevator motor stops and starts.
• Portable energy storage systems, smart panels, and/or smart circuits to facilitate electrification in disadvantaged community (DAC) and hard-to-reach (HTR) residences as an alternative to traditional electrification retrofits involving panel and service upsizing.

Barriers

Potential studies of barriers may address:

• Research to fully understand how electrical infrastructure acts as a barrier to electrification efforts.
• Lack of experienced electrical practitioners, especially for HTR, DAC, multifamily, and nonresidential buildings.
• Disconnect between the National Electric Code and normal power consumption with electrification and how best to address safety risks for load management approaches. Different stakeholders often have varying perspectives and goals regarding electrification activities.
• Lack of whole-building thinking in electrification programs that promote best practices in design and construction first — such as adequate envelope insulation and rightsizing electric appliances.
• Extensive and complex local city and utility codes that can make panel replacements and upsizing a major and expensive project, often requiring permitting or approval processes that can take months to complete.
• High cost of transformer replacements in addition to the limited number of manufacturers, resulting in longer payback periods and lead times for equipment replacement.
• Site-level infrastructure analysis not coordinated with utility-level system planning and the broader evaluation of costs and benefits.

CalNEXT Related Projects

• Residential Smart Panel Field Demonstration
• Market Study of Household Electric Infrastructure Upgrade Alternatives for Electrification

Definition

This technology family focuses on reducing costs, energy use, and lifecycle emissions in the design and construction of whole buildings. It includes construction practices that reduce waste and improve compliance with high performance standards, as well as the use of off-site construction practices, such as manufactured housing, volumetric modular construction — a construction method where entire rooms or building sections are fully built off-site in a factory — or industrial panelization — a construction method where only flat panels, such as walls and floors, are pre-manufactured in a factory and then transported to site for assembly. Building design includes project delivery practices and building standards that maximize energy efficiency and promote low-lifecycle carbon and cost in the design, construction, and operation of a building.

Lifecycle carbon and lifecycle cost analyses support building design that delivers the same or greater energy savings at lower upfront carbon emissions or lower cost in the near- or long-term.

Research Initiatives

Research Initiatives	Performance Validation Needs	Market Analysis Needs	Measure Development Needs	Program Development Needs
High-performance manufactured housing
Energy efficient industrialized construction
Building lifecycle carbon or cost analysis
Energy efficient integrated design and construction project delivery

Opportunities

Opportunities for study for this technology family include, but are not limited to:

• Characterization through residential building simulation modeling of buildings built with aerated autoclaved concrete to determine energy saving benefits in California climates.
• Characterization of energy savings and economics of high albedo standing seam metal roofs paired with cellulose blown in attic insulation in residential buildings in California.
• An evaluation of the performance of building integrated ducted wind turbines as a means of generating enough energy under the net billing tariff to justify the cost.
• Studies on how to reduce energy intensity and emissions from the manufacturing of construction materials, e.g., cement, steel, glass, insulation materials, and others.
• Studies to improve on-site construction practices and overall building performance through integrated design and construction project delivery.
• Demonstrations, scaled deployments, improvements to modeling and analysis tools, or other strategies to increase the development and deployment of low-lifecycle carbon buildings or high-performance whole buildings.
• Studies to improve building design practices, which have the potential to reduce lifetime energy and emissions associated with construction by creating systems that exceed California energy and building standards, and favor building materials with lower embodied carbon.
• Market research to harmonize low-embodied-carbon design with energy efficiency and expand it into the private sector, especially in off-site or partial off-site construction.

Barriers

Potential studies of barriers may address:

• Market recognition and understanding of benefits of low carbon building materials, and verifiable energy and life cycle cost benefits compared to existing materials, technology, and implementation costs.
• Barriers to design practices, including practices that facilitate meeting higher energy efficiency standards such as ENERGY STAR^®, CA Title 20, and CA Title 24 that result in high efficiency and low carbon buildings by manufacturers, developers, construction managers, and building designers.
• Limited information on efficient building products and end-use systems for designers, engineers, and others to easily assess high-efficiency options across various metrics, including performance, cost, embodied carbon, and others. Data, even when available, is often siloed across many different government and industry-specific product lists ― e.g., the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) for HVAC, the Design Lights Consortium (DLC) for lighting, and others.
• Education and training the construction trades in the efficient and effective construction of all electric homes. Measures such as heat pump space conditioning, heat pump water heaters and smart panels require wiring and interconnection by installers on site.
• Programs supporting high-performance electrification of manufactured and modular low-income housing, such as the US Department of Energy (DOE) Zero Energy Ready Home program; the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Manufactured Housing program, low-income housing programs applying to single-family and multifamily housing, and accessory dwelling units.
• Education and training in the integration of design, construction, and building commissioning in residential and commercial work. Accounting for co-benefits can also move the needle on justifying the costs for higher performance options, e.g., improved building resilience, health, safety, productivity, and more.

CalNEXT Related Projects

• Mobile and Manufactured Housing Market Characterization Study
• Manufactured Housing Electrification Measure Development Support

Definition

Whole-building operational performance accounts for the dynamic interactions between a building and its environment, energy systems, and occupants, with a particular focus on optimizing energy efficiency and minimizing unnecessary energy consumption over time. Many of the strategies within this category are enabled by controls, automation, and analytics technologies that support ongoing optimization of building performance. Building commissioning (Cx) is an important strategy for achieving, verifying, and documenting proper operation of new buildings and new systems in ways that ensure systems deliver designed energy performance. Similarly, existing building commissioning (EBCx), also called retro-commissioning, is a process that seeks to improve how building equipment and systems function together to identify and capture persistent energy efficiency opportunities in existing buildings. EBCx can also include more sophisticated approaches that ensure operational changes and energy savings persist, such as commissioning based on monitoring (MBCx), continuous commissioning (CCx), and virtual commissioning (VCx).

System modeling and analytics includes the software — algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence, digital twins, predictive models, first-principle or physics-based energy models — and data sources — building controls, internet of things (IoT), market and demographic data, external data sources — used to improve operational performance by enabling more efficient operation, reduced energy waste, and continuous identification of energy efficiency improvements. Building performance standards (BPS) are outcome-based policy and law requiring existing buildings to meet energy or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions performance targets. Normalized metered energy consumption (NMEC) measures meter data before and after building energy interventions to determine savings. Residential energy automation (REA) systems are a network of devices that automate and control a home’s energy systems, such as home energy management systems (HEMS) and distributed energy resource (DER) hardware, with increasing emphasis on improving household energy efficiency alongside load management.

Operational Performance is distinguished from Integrated Systems by its emphasis on measurement, verification, and persistence of savings through operational improvements. Projects that are primarily HVAC- or Water Heating-focused should investigate alignment with the technology families in the HVAC and Water Heating TPMs.

Research Initiatives

Research Initiatives	Performance Validation Needs	Market Analysis Needs	Measure Development Needs	Program Development Needs
Site-level normalized meter energy consumption
Scalable residential operational performance and REA
Automated operational performance
Automated building commissioning

Opportunities

Opportunities for study for this technology family include, but are not limited to:

• REA systems that provide centralized and integrated control of building loads to improve energy efficiency, optimize energy use, and reduce costs for homeowners, which may include electric vehicle charging systems, photovoltaic generation, battery energy storage inverters, and traditional building loads like lighting, HVAC, water heating, and plug loads.
• System modeling and analytics solutions that ingest existing building data, e.g., building automation system trends, IoT, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and census data, and output solutions to improve operational performance, such as fault detection, preventive maintenance recommendations, energy efficiency improvement measures, energy resiliency planning, or controls optimization.
• Measure development, tools, and program offerings that have a streamlined custom measure verification process for operational energy efficiency measures to increase program participation.
• Measures and technologies that help buildings achieve BPS targets or improve NMEC incentives, including through reductions in energy use and improved operational efficiency.
• Measure development to increase program participation in MBCx, CCx, and VCx. Measure development that aligns with Cal TF custom measure efforts, such as a hybrid or deemed approach for commissioning sub measures with higher effective useful life and clearer linkage to energy efficiency outcomes.
• Technologies that focus on real-time feedback for maintaining operational performance and sustaining energy efficiency gains while minimizing costs for customers, utilities, and grid operators ― including those that leverage grid-responsive or grid-interactive technologies.
• Emerging operational performance solutions designed for small commercial buildings, multifamily properties, and sites without dedicated facility staff or building automation systems, including scalable, low-cost approaches such as contractor-deployed controls packages, simplified commissioning workflows, and cloud-based analytics platforms that reduce reliance on complex on-site infrastructure.
• Reaching underserved or HTR populations with existing operational performance technologies to deliver equitable access to energy efficiency improvements and associated bill savings.

Barriers

Potential studies of barriers may address:

• Barriers to adoption of operational performance approaches include challenges related to customer participation, availability and capability of service providers, data access and management, savings verification and quality assurance, and uncertainty around applicable program pathways (e.g., site-level NMEC, population-based NMEC, custom programs, or potential future deemed approaches).
• Lack of understanding of the technical and market barriers to BPS and NMEC, as well as limited tools and technologies for meeting targets or achieving cost-effective energy efficiency improvements.
• REA systems face several challenges, including the cost of smart panels, complexity for residential occupants, uncertainty and dynamics of loads and generation, optimal capacity configuration, control strategies, infrastructure limitations, and microgrid challenges, which can limit their realized energy efficiency potential.
• Need for validation of automated NMEC software and calculation algorithms, including ways to handle nonroutine events. Lack of understanding of NMEC service providers business models and technology and market barriers to scaling energy efficiency-focused NMEC applications.
• Need for a detailed breakdown of benefits by feature combined with comparative analysis among REA products, including impacts on energy efficiency, peak demand, and total consumption.
• Need for more field validation of physics-based models used for measure identification and program delivery. Lack of understanding of types of service providers, technology applications, and market barriers to implementing energy efficiency-driven operational performance solutions.
• Need to measure the savings and cost-effectiveness of automated commissioning technology. Lack of understanding of technology and vendor landscape of smart building software, interoperability, and open standards.

CalNEXT Related Projects

• AMI Intelligence Connected Building Energy Modeling
• Enhanced Normalized Metered Energy Consumption Analysis with Rapid Interventions
• Performance Evaluation of Advanced HEMS
• Electrification Enablement via Load Balancing Solutions Focus Pilot

Definition

The envelope category covers products, design, and controls strategies, or installation techniques that reduce building energy demand, particularly as it enables electrification with heat pumps. This includes individual products ― such as insulation, windows, air and weather barriers, and insulated cladding ― as well as construction techniques ― such as quality insulation installation, thermal bridge-free design, and retrofit air seal. The envelope category also includes strategies and technologies that reduce the cost of building energy retrofits.

Note: See the Design & Construction technology research area for additional defined project categories, such as innovative building assembly design.

Research Initiatives

Research Initiatives	Performance Validation Needs	Market Analysis Needs	Measure Development Needs	Program Development Needs
Thermal mass additions and improvements
Window improvements
Window attachments
Air sealing retrofits

Opportunities

Opportunities for study for this technology family include, but are not limited to:

• In climates with a significant heating load, building envelope upgrades, including high-performance window replacement, that make heat pump electrification successful by minimizing the use of supplemental heat, improving cost-effectiveness, reducing the heat load, and ensuring comfort.
• In climates with heavy cooling loads, envelope upgrades—including low-cost window attachment products—can significantly reduce HVAC energy use, reduce peak demand, shift peak, and improve thermal comfort and resilience during power outages and demand response events.
• Market research on products, such as more cost-effective insulation and air sealing materials, or on advancing construction practices. Studies are limited to deployable technologies for building sectors or types representing a significant portion of California’s building stock.
• Studies that address the high cost of building envelope energy retrofits, and techniques that can be deployed with minimal disruption to building occupants or neighboring properties.
• Field studies, modeling simulations, or market research that demonstrates the magnitude of energy and demand savings from envelope improvements to support new programs.
• Characterization through modeling of the energy saving effects of thermal mass integrated into the building envelope with an emphasis on the implications of the added cost over the life of a typical 30-year home loan when the energy savings are taken into consideration.
• Demonstration of the performance of thin film photovoltaics integrated into a high-rise building facade.
• Research into low carbon, natural or fire-retardant insulation materials that can compete with fiber glass on cost.
• Manufactured home envelope design improvements that enable heat pump electrification without electric resistance supplement at minimal additional cost.

Barriers

Potential studies of barriers may address:

• Lack of information and scalable solutions related to retrofit technologies for existing residential and commercial buildings.
• The high cost of retrofit improvement to the building enclosure.
• Lack of information on energy and demand impact of lower-performing envelope components.
• Lack of customer awareness of benefits of higher-performing envelope components.
• Overcoming the gap between nominal and effective energy code compliance or assembly performance.
• Lack of trusted tools to facilitate accurate savings estimates in support of design decisions and programs.

CalNEXT Related Projects

• Commercial Windows Market Study and Measure Package Development
• Residential High-Performance Windows Measure Package Development
• Low-Income Multifamily Housing Characteristics Study
• Mobile and Manufactured Housing Market Characterization Study

Definition

Community-scale strategies can aggregate, balance, and control the flow of energy ― thermal or electric ― among multiple buildings and end-uses for improved performance. They include hardware and software technology solutions that orchestrate end-use and building operations across building boundaries. The costs, value streams, and benefits are measured across multiple utility meters and are shared by the community’s members, the local grid (e.g. a neighborhood or town block, the whole neighborhood or town, a specific feeder or transformer), and the larger grid system. The benefits support California’s market transformation goals related to higher system efficiency, energy resilience, load flexibility, and grid harmonization.

Community-scale strategies can contribute toward the CalNEXT program goal of achieving GHG reductions benefits, particularly when community strategies include the use of renewable distributed generation, such as solar energy combined with energy storage. These solutions have achieved market readiness individually. However, the coordinated operation to support grid harmonization using solar, energy storage with thermal storage and other building loads across multiple buildings requires further research along with valuation of end user and utility benefits. Energy efficiency is a necessary and essential element of maximizing economically feasible community-scale strategies. Energy efficiency reduces the load and therefore, the size and the installed cost of the community-scale solutions. In this respect, energy efficiency becomes an enabling technology for the distributed generation and results in an integrated approach for community-scale strategies.

CalNEXT expects significant research activity will primarily continue in other emerging technology programs with focus areas beyond this program, such as demand response aggregation in the case of virtual power plants and microgrid electric service resiliency. As such, priority designation for this technology family is set to “low” to minimize overlap of research efforts with the other emerging technology programs.

Research Initiatives

Research Initiatives	Performance Validation Needs	Market Analysis Needs	Measure Development Needs	Program Development Needs
Understanding of microgrid controller products
A market for virtual power plants (VPP) and community microgrid interactions
Operation of a VPP and community microgrid under a real-time pricing tariff
Value stacking by community microgrid operators
Opt-in or opt-out solutions for customers of community microgrids

Opportunities

Opportunities for study for this technology family include, but are not limited to:

• Modeling studies that demonstrate performance benefits in terms of magnitude and cost-effectiveness of emissions reductions, e.g., retirement or decommissioning of gas infrastructure in an existing block or avoided cost of installing new gas infrastructure in a new residential development.
• Market research, lab testing, modeling, and field studies that help define benefits and value propositions.
• Virtual power plant (VPP) research—modeling the effects on energy consumption and energy savings of integrated energy efficiency, solar and batteries, and flexible loads control and management—the VPP aspect of the modeling effort will look at the benefits on a large scale in relieving grid constraints and enabling greater renewable energy consumption.
• Modeling studies for community microgrids, projects may test or assess the potential and feasibility of receiving benefits from multiple value streams, such as participation in ancillary services markets while operating in parallel with the grid and energy resilience during a grid outage to better understand the economic viability.
• Zonal electrification research involving powerflow modeling at distribution feeder level. When paired with both VPPs and community microgrids, zonal electrification can have beneficial utility distribution grid level impacts. If sited in areas known to have distribution grid congestion, strategies and plans can be developed and demonstrated by virtual power plant aggregators and community microgrid operators with the local utility distribution services provider to offer grid support.

Barriers

Potential studies of barriers may address:

• Nascent standards environment for interoperability of grid assets.
• Lack of empirical data and case studies on project costs, operational performance, and benefits.
• Lack of market understanding for microgrid controller products.
• Lower market penetration rates of non-wires alternatives for DAC and HTR communities.
• Lack of demonstrated value stacking by community microgrid operators to show economic viability, such as by including participation in ancillary services markets.
• Lack of demonstrated opt-in and opt-out opportunities for customers of community microgrids.
• Limited types of revenue opportunities in existing markets for technologies used for VPPs and community microgrids to sell into and purchase power from.
• Lack of a real-time pricing tariff to demonstrate economic viability for technologies, such as VPPs and community microgrids, among others.

CalNEXT Related Projects

There are no CalNEXT projects related to this technology research area at this time.