Comments on: What If Home Builders Had to Pay the Energy Bills?

By: Danny Gough

Danny Gough — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 20:56:19 +0000

Since we started
Since we started investigating high bill complaints in Energy Star homes some 3 years ago, I so identify with Rick's sentiments here. But I imagine some of his recommendations more driven by frustration than literality. Unintentional misrepresentations made by well meaning, poorly trained industries are still misrepresentations that damage the owner. Rick's intent is righteous - why not give the homeowner what they pay for. If a consumer buys a dozen eggs and gets home only to find only 8 in the carton, he got cheated. Our industry predicts there are a dozen in the carton, but we don't expect anyone to actually peak inside.

By: Dan Wildenhaus

Dan Wildenhaus — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 02:16:26 +0000

t would certainly make
t would certainly make Guaranteed Performance sales go up :-)

I actually like the 50% credit until commissioned rule the best.

Builders will never pay the bills though. That implies way to much responsibility after the homeowner moves in and starts doing weird stuff to and in the house. If you could instead allow a guaranteed performance plan to qualify you for code, you might be in business.

Of course looking at real billing data compared to modeled data is a cool idea. Perhaps a matrix that gives heating/cooling/water heating projections based on number of residents, children and the elderly....compare that to real billing for heating/cooling/water heating (if they have a teenage daughter, that will impact hot water use!) would be a more realistic and easier to side by side metric.

You could tie it in to homeowner bonus incentives if they can use 10% less than the matrix predicted if you had a willing utility.

By: Andy Wahl

Andy Wahl — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 13:58:32 +0000

Rick:

Rick:

Great list.

I would change item #7 to: The architect and the builder would be bonded for the first 10 years of utility bills. If the building is not net Zero the bond would be required to determine why and pay to fix.

By: tedkidd

tedkidd — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 23:23:25 +0000

Picture is frightenly common
Picture is frightenly common – customer wants cool, and asks contractor to do it cheapest way possible:

http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?1497811-NO! 

Is it fair to blame the contractor? Is it fair to punish the contractor? Is it EFFECTIVE to punish the contractor, or is change better accomplished with INCENTIVE?

Yes, people are providing guarantees:
http://bit.ly/energywise-hersratingsdontcorrelatetoenergyuse http://bit.ly/ThermalInertia 

Recognize and reward excellence is the positive side of expose and punish crap. People aren’t going to compete around quality unless there is REWARD for doing so.

If we are going to move the WHOLE market, there needs to be POSITIVE incentive. People need to be PAID for doing better work, and how they are paid does not need to be money. It can be reputation. Tangible proof of who does the best work, or is most accurate has significant reward potential:

http://bit.ly/bdvariancealpha
http://bit.ly/bdactualalpha 

Here’s the premise outlined:
http://bit.ly/TrustTransparencyTruth

By: geoff hartman

geoff hartman — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 22:22:41 +0000

Not a new idea, but one worth
Not a new idea, but one worth repeating.

I worked with a builder in the dark ages of EE (early 1980s) who included the first year (somtimes 2) as a sales incentive. So in addition to guaranteeing energy bills, he wrote a check for the projected heatibg and cooling energy use and handed it to the buyer at closing. Then, if ht/cool energy exceeded the estimate, ge would cover tgat at the end of the year.

Crazy? Crazy smart! He generally got asking price and the homes were the most comfortable and efficient in town. I never had a comfort, or high bill complaint from these homes.

By: David Eakin

David Eakin — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 21:50:37 +0000

All this talk about new home
All this talk about new home construction is all well and good (but I am a larger proponent of USA-wide stretch goals for air sealing and insulation; ALL builders are required to meet building codes).
What about existing homes (like your image)? How about this – all residences must comply with all new home construction requirements prior to title transfer? Will this re-energize the building industry? You bet! Will it require that millions of outmoded, unsafe energy hogs with no historic significance will be torn down and replaced (because it will cost less)? Sure – and everyone will benefit. Will it turn the real estate business on its ear? Yes – and this is where the largest resistance will be seen.

By: Skye Dunning

Skye Dunning — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 20:41:48 +0000

I like having the predicted
I like having the predicted and actual energy use public. I think any time you make things more transparent, everyone wins (except the cheaters). You could probably apply an open source model to this whole area.

I also strongly agree with the "measured approach". I think modeling has been a challenging but useful tool for us, but something I don't see the reason to be using as our primary source of information much longer. With our data-driven society of today the barriers to using real numbers are coming down rapidly.

But 4 and 7 I don't agree with. Small HVAC contractors could go for years without having a system tested. And 7 would just be complete chaos for many reasons. There aren't enough fingers on our hands to cover the blame slinging that would occur.

There is another approach to this which is already in place. Heating/cooling bill guarantees. Right now we're using utility bill disaggregation to do this in different building programs around the country, and it works well.

A different, but similar, approach could be space and water conditioning as a service. This service, sold by the energy consultant, would offer guaranteed HVAC and hot water set points for x dollars (btu's really, subject to change from utility price changes) per month. And these services could be expanded. I would like to offer those features plus clean water (the real elephant in the room of building performance/green building programs IMO) and clean air, verified at appropriate intervals.

As with energy modeling, I think it's about time for utility bill dissagregation to take a step back, in favor of measuring actual electrical/fuel usage via home automation systems which are rapidly becoming affordable and accessible to the main stream.

By: Eric Werling

Eric Werling — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:58:29 +0000

I like where Rick is going –
I like where Rick is going – toward measured performance, transparency, and accountability for results. These all work well in other industries (and even in governement). But – and this is a big BUT – I don’t think we want a solution that removes occupant responsibility from the equation. If occupants don’t pay their own bills, their part in energy waste will probably get worse. Maybe we can find a way to share the utility bills between the builder and the owner? Afterall, both have significant influence on how high or low it goes.

By: Chris Kaiser

Chris Kaiser — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:18:32 +0000

I like everything except
I like everything except point 7. I mean, it's great in theory, but if a homeowner knows the home builder will be footing the bill, what's to stop the homeowner from going on an energy spending spree? Why bother turning down the thermostat in the summer? If anything, it should be up to the homeowner to interview their builder and ask them how they approach energy efficiency. Maybe a simple, easy to understand rating system that energy companies rank builders on so the layperson can understand.

By: Mark Farver

Mark Farver — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 17:46:21 +0000

If builders had to cover
If builders had to cover energy costs for the first X years of a home's life they would have no incentive to make any improvements that did not payback within that time limit. A lot of building technology improvements take a few years more than that to payback.

In the automotive industry "We'll pay the gas for the first (year/life of lease)" incentives appear occasionally when gas prices spike. They are almost always applied to the LEAST efficient vehicles. This isolates the customer from the real lifecycle cost and gets those gas guzzlers and their large profit margins off the lot.