News
Read about NREL's building research in the news. Articles are organized by month and year.
This zero energy home was built by NREL and Habitat Metro Denver in 2005.
Credit: Pete Beverly.
November/December 2006
NREL Teams with Habitat for Humanity to Build Zero Energy Home
This 3 bedroom, 1,200-ft2 home in Denver is not only affordable, it's a zero energy home! That means it is designed to produce as much energy as it consumes annually. Reaching zero energy in cold climates is challenging, so we designed a home that carefully combines the efficiency of the building envelope (i.e., insulation, windows, etc.) with efficient heating and cooling equipment, appliances, lighting, passive solar, solar- electric, and solar water heating features. The home was designed using BEOpt, building optimization software designed by NREL with additional analysis provided by DOE-2, a widely used and accepted freeware building energy analysis software program courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy. So far, the home is exceeding expectations and is a net-producer!
For more information about this home, read, "A Cold Climate Case Study for Affordable Zero Energy Homes." (PDF 648 KB) Download Adobe Reader.
Home Energy magazine has also featured this home on their Web site in an article called "The Little House that Could." To read the article, visit www.homeenergy.org.
High-performance home near Sacramento, California, a house of similar square footage was used for the NREL study.
September 2006
A New NREL Study Shows Energy Analysts the "Least-Cost" Path to Zero Energy
A new study by NREL building researchers gives energy analysts and other building professionals the most cost effective path to zero energy consumption. NREL researchers were investigating ways to reduce peak utility loads when they discovered a more cost-effective approach to reduce a home's total energy consumption, including all electrical and heating loads. A 2,592-ft2 hypothetical home in Sacramento, California was used as a model for the study. The house was assumed to have features similar to that of typical homes in the area: slab foundation; two-car garage; similar window area; natural gas for cooking, space and water heating, and drying clothes. The computer modeling program used in the study is called BEopt. BEopt is a tool used by researchers faced with the challenge of comparing the costs, energy savings, and interactions between a large number of different combinations of energy-saving options that can potentially be used to achieve whole-building energy savings. Researchers at NREL have developed the BEopt analysis method as one approach to solving this analysis problem.
The study was presented at the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings in August 2006 in a paper titled, "Program Design Analysis using BEopt Building Energy Optimization Software: Defining a Technology Pathway Leading to New Homes with Zero Peak Cooling Demand." For more information, read, "Program Design Analysis using BEopt Building Energy Optimization Software: Defining a Technology Pathway Leading to New Homes with Zero Peak Cooling Demand." (PDF 695 KB) Download Adobe Reader.
Our study was also featured in the September 2006 issue of Energy Design Update®, a newsletter published by Aspen Publishers. A copy of their newsletter is provided with permission. © 2006 Aspen Publishers. (PDF 622 KB) Download Adobe Reader.
