Energuide Rating 0GJ

“This house produces more energy than it uses on an annual basis”.

Rolling into the weekend on a high with our final EnerGuide Rating & Report and Step Code Compliance documentation in hand 😃. In short, home energy consumption is down 80% from the original house (185GJ/yr -> 38 GJ/yr – see Baseline Energuide Report) and we anticipate generating >110% of that energy on-site from solar. This translates into BC Energy Step Code Level 4 ✅ and an EnerGuide rating of zero ✅🎉.

The breakdown of consumption is also super interesting:

• Space heating, which used to be responsible for over 70% of our energy use, is down to 27%, roughly on par with lights and appliances.
• Water heating is down from 13% to 8% of energy use.
• Any heat loss which occurs is now roughly in even amounts through windows, walls and foundation, whereas this used to be heavily dominated by windows (nearly 40% of heat loss).

Looking forward to tracking actual performance once we’ve moved in, which may be higher or lower than the model depending on how we operate the home and modeling uncertainty. EV charging, e.g. is a significant energy use not included in the net zero rating, which could add 6-16 GJ energy per year. The energy models also make assumptions about temperature setpoints, appliance loads, weather conditions, materials and insulation performance which could differ from reality.

We’ve installed an energy monitoring system from @emporia_energy which will help us analyze modeled vs actual energy usage. This includes tracking whole home energy use and solar generation, as well as major loads such as space and water heating, mechanical ventilation, appliances etc. Excited to see how close to net-zero the home performs in practice!

For now we are celebrating having achieved our design goal - it was a whole team effort and we are super proud of the result.

#netzero #netzerohome #netzeroenergy #greenbuilding #sustainability #solar #renewables #energuide #bcenergystepcode @twinlionscontracting @capitalhomeenergy