Welcome to Home Power Planner
Project Summary
With EPIC funding, our project team is creating an open-source, friendly tool - i.e. the Home Power Planner - to guide homeowners and professionals through strategies for electrifying single-family homes with existing infrastructure where possible. We will use power efficient design strategies to support the Home Power Planner’s tailored cost-effective recommendations. In developing the nuts and bolts of this tool, we will conduct field research and gather data of what exists in people’s homes and how the tool performs. These demonstrations will show how our planning tool’s power efficient design strategies work for electrifying different housing types and electrical setups.
Project Goals
- Develop a user-friendly, open-sourced, online power-efficient electrification tool
- Collaborate with key stakeholders to improve the tool’s usability and capabilities.
- Support homeowners in understanding their electrical panel capacity and ways to minimize the cost of electrification.
- Develop a business model and commercialization plan for the tool.
The Issue
A key barrier to home electrification is determining the “limits” of home and utility infrastructure when adding new electric loads. A common, and usually unneeded, practice is replacing panels with a larger size when installing a new electrical appliance or equipment. This panel upsizing practice can cost thousands and can delay projects for months. Upsizing also increases peak demand, requiring utilities to upgrade transformers, wires, and generation—costs passed to all ratepayers, hitting lower-income households hardest. Technical experts, leading contractors, and researchers have developed a better approach: power efficient design. This approach has been proven in real homes, but most homeowners, contractors, and officials do not know it is possible, and current planning tools provide little support.
Project Innovation
This project will create a free tool, the Home Power Planner, for home electrification with power efficient design recommendations – e.g. low-power and/or multifunctional appliances, load controls, and space-saving strategies. It will ensure National Electric Code (NEC) compliance – lowering perceived risks with novel approaches. Users will also be guided to resources for project execution. The Home Power Planner’s open API will let other platforms integrate its features, expanding reach statewide. By standardizing assumptions, the Home Power Planner makes power efficient design easy for homeowners, contractors, and professionals – lowering costs, reducing grid strain, and enabling equitable electrification.
Project Benefits
Environmental & Public Health
The Home Power Planner saves homeowners about $2,000 to $9,000 per home at a minimum, and up to $30,000 if major utility upgrades are needed. It also reduces overall costs by avoiding unnecessary grid investments.
Equity
The Home Power Planner creates accessible electrification paths, helping disadvantaged communities avoid costly planning and enabling affordable, inclusive energy transitions.
Lower Costs
The Home Power Planner supports electrification, removing unvented combustion, improving indoor air quality, and advancing healthier, more sustainable communities.
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