A Decision Tool to Electrify Homes with Limited Electrical Panel Capacity
A Decision Tool to help homeowners electrifying their homes by avoiding the need to upsize their electrical panel
Project Update
The project commenced in January 2025. The project team initiated the first technical task, which focuses on summarizing the state-of-the-art technologies and strategies for power efficiency to be incorporated into the Tool. This task aims to create a valuable resource for home demonstrations. The primary objective is to identify, review, and compare existing power-efficient appliances, control devices, calculation tools, and power optimization solutions that support homes in electrifying their systems within the capacity of their existing electrical panels.
The Issue
A key barrier to home electrification is the potential limits of home and utility infrastructure when adding new electric loads. Panel replacements typically cost several thousand dollars and take weeks to months to implement. Furthermore, significantly increasing peak home electrical demand will lead to significant increases in utility infrastructure, the cost of which is also borne by ratepayers. This is particularly important for disadvantaged households that are least able to afford these higher costs. An industry-wide shift in perspective is needed to consider power efficient design (PED) as well as current energy efficiency approaches. While technologies and home electrification strategies exist to adopt PED they are rarely used due to lack of familiarity for electricians, code authorities and home occupants. Existing design and electrification planning tools provide little to no support for PED.
Project Innovation
The project will develop a freely available Tool for home electrification that provides recommendations on PEDs including load controls, low power appliances, space saving solutions, and other strategies for power efficient electrification. The Tool ensures compliance with the National Electric Code (NEC) to reduce the perceived risks associated with novel approaches to home electrification. The Tool will provide additional support by guiding users to other resources for executing projects. The Tool’s calculation engine will include “AI”-based approaches to identifying optimum recommendations and an API that allows other existing tools and solution providers to leverage the underlying datasets, calculation modules and calculation engine a la carte in their own products and services. The Tool enables PED by standardizing assumptions and calculations, making advanced design decisions easy for inexperienced users, homeowners and industry professionals alike.
By developing and validating an easy-to-use Tool, this project will expand and transform the market for guiding homeowners to adopt cost-effective electrification plans that avoid unnecessary panel upsizing and increased grid loads. The Tool will lower barriers from lack of knowledge to financial costs to make partial and/or full home electrification an accessible transition for homeowners. For contractors, the Tool will be a useful addition to their home electrification toolbox to streamline their work with quick references and evaluations of the devices, controls, appliances, and effective approaches for panel optimization. The market for home electrification services and software will accelerate in growth as 3rd party software providers leverage the Tool’s open source calculation modules to improve the capabilities of their products. Lastly, government and utility programs can leverage the Tool to maximize program funds to be used for home electrification rather than unnecessary panel service replacement. The Tool will remove major bottlenecks in the delivery of residential electrification and will facilitate lower-cost, faster, power-efficient and equitable solutions.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
This project will result in the ratepayer benefits of lower up-front installation costs, greater electricity reliability, and improved health and safety because the Tool will promote cost effective electrification planning support, minimize future rate increases from lessening peak demand impacts on the electric grid, and improve indoor air quality through removal of unvented combustion from homes when homes are electrified.
Affordability
Use of the Tool directly reduces the capital costs and decarbonization project time delays to ratepayers due to unnecessary panel and service upsizing. Avoiding electrical panel and service upgrades will save about $2,000 to $9,000 per home at a minimum and likely up to $30,000 per home if extensive utility-side upgrades are necessary when service is underground or transformers need to be replaced.
Affordability
Costs are also reduced for all ratepayers because the Tool supports solutions that help avoid upstream investments needed for electrical grid upgrades.
Equity
The Tool will provide viable, accessible electrification paths for disadvantaged communities that have limited resources to invest in their homes, or to engage in costly and time-consuming planning efforts.
Environmental Sustainability
The Tool will increase the number of homes that are electrified, resulting in significant health benefits to ratepayers due to the removal of unvented combustion from homes when homes are electrified.
Key Project Members
Jenny Low
Subrecipients
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Home Energy Analytics
TRC Engineers, Inc.
Redwood Energy, LLC
Central California Asthma Collaborative
QuitCarbon
San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association
Tom Kabat
Match Partners
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Home Energy Analytics
TRC Engineers, Inc.
NeoCharge Incorporated
QuitCarbon
Rewiring America
Rock Rabbit
UtilityAPI
Vistar Energy Inc. (DBA XeroHome)
