A team of technologists from GE's Industrial Solutions, Appliances, Lighting and Research divisions is partnering with major utilities, builders and local communities in the western U.S. to evaluate and develop new strategies that reduce energy usage in new and existing homes by up to 70% or more.
With the average U.S. household paying $1,240 per year in electricity costs, this program could save homeowners more than $850 per year on their electricity costs, GE said.
GE is part of DOE's Building America team, Building Industry Research
Alliance (BIRA). The team, led by ConSol, energy consultants
headquartered in Stockton, California, also includes: Washington State
University, Arizona State University, University of California at Davis,
Ennovationz, Sacramento Municipalities Utilities District, San Diego
Gas & Electric (NYSE: SRE), Arizona Public Service, Pulte Homes, Salt River
Project and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). BIRA was one of 15 teams selected to
receive funding from the DOE through its Building Technologies Program.
GE and its project partners will assemble a comprehensive package of home energy solutions, which will be demonstrated in several test houses located in various cities throughout the western U.S., including Phoenix, Arizona; Sacramento, California, and San Diego, California. The GE team will integrate a package of roof top solar panels and smart grid-enabled energy-efficient appliance and lighting products with its recently introduced Nucleus(TM) Home Energy Manager.
Nucleus(TM), part of GE's Brillion(TM) suite of smart home energy management solutions, delivers real-time energy usage consumption data to PCs and smart phone applications, empowering homeowners to track and make decisions about how and when they use energy. In addition to tracking energy improvements within individual test houses, an assessment of these solutions also will be done on a neighborhood scale.
As part of the BIRA program, GE and its project partners will test new energy efficiency and clean power measures both in newly constructed and existing homes. The DOE has cited that today residential buildings account for about 21.5% of the nation's primary energy consumption and carbon emissions, and about 38% of electricity. Of the residential buildings in existence today, about 85% were constructed prior to the year 2000. In general, the older the building, the less stringent the applicable energy code at the time of construction. As a result, many older residences may be poorly insulated, suffer from excessive air leakage, have old, poorly operating, inefficient mechanical equipment, have less efficient appliances, and have a high percentage of incandescent lights. Energy retrofits and high performance new homes are considered to be among the most cost-effective ways for the nation to reduce its energy use and carbon emissions.
Earlier this week the DOE announced that Penn State University will lead an energy innovation hub for energy efficient building technologies.
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Read Denver Post coverage at the link below.
