Load Reduction Impacts as a Goal for Building Envelope Programs

Residential decarbonization programs have new and different goals in cold climate states that have steep carbon reduction targets,.  Energy savings (kWh and therms) is no longer the critical measurement of success.   Adding too many heat pumps can have serious impacts on the ability of electric utilities to keep people warm on the coldest days.  Load reduction programs address this impending problem using a whole house approach to reducing the required capacity of heat pumps. Load reduction programs use building envelope performance improvements to provide permanent demand reduction, making sure that the heat pumps installed are correctly sized to the improved building.  NYSERDA has developed and implemented the Comfort Home program to help bring load reduction to scale in New York State.  To help make Comfort Home successful, NYSERDA, with support from US DOE, has developed a set of tools and regulator approved transparent EnergyPlus based calculations.  These new methods help contractors make better decisions at a lower cost per job, and improve the cost effectiveness of investing in building envelopes.