Electrification of California’s residential housing stock is essential to achieve the state’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2045. The Energy-Smart Homes Program is a California residential program that offers incentives for whole building electrification, supporting California’s focus on building electrification to meet its climate objectives.

Many program applicants face the challenge of limited electrical capacity when selecting

electrification measures for their home, resulting in the need to upsize their electrical panels. A key barrier to the electrification is the cost and time delays associated with the need for electrical panel or utility service upsizing. This program also provides a bonus incentive for electrical load management technologies that enable homeowners to electrify while avoiding service upgrades and avoid adding extra load to the grid.

In addition, this program can provide no-cost design and assistance to homeowners and installers to assist in the selection of right technologies to accelerate cost-effective electrification.

Within the Energy-Smart Homes Program, alterations incentives support electrification retrofits of single family and multifamily homes, including heat pump space and water heating, induction cooking, dryers, and electrical upgrades. Residential electrification is critical to California’s 2045 carbon neutrality goal, but retrofits face technical and financial challenges across building types and vintages.

This presentation summarizes real-world program outcomes using pre- and post-retrofit utility bills, equipment data, and installation costs of several hundred homes. The study assessed energy use, emissions, utility bills, and changes in hourly load profiles under typical and extreme weather. Analyzed by climate zone, vintage, size, and PV or battery presence, the results showed large reductions in energy use and emissions, utility bill impacts that varied with PV, and significant winter morning peak increases, highlighting the need for load management strategies.

Findings provide insights to refine program design, guide scalable retrofits, and advance a reliable, cost-effective carbon-free residential sector.

Key barriers to electrification are the cost and time delays associated with upsizing

electrical panels and utility service to accommodate new loads. This pilot study

investigated how load balancing technologies (LBTs) can facilitate beneficial electrification

without costly electrical infrastructure upgrades.

This pilot validates LBTs in EV charging installations to understand their capability to

dynamically manage high demand loads and demonstrated potential for electrifying within

the existing electrical infrastructure. The pilot covers a wide spectrum of technologies

including circuit splitters, meter collars, smart panels, and smart circuit breakers. These

technologies were installed and tested in ten sites to demonstrate optimal configuration

for electrification and managing loads within existing panel capacity.

Key outcomes included technology performance findings, integration challenges, and

practical recommendations for contractors, customers, and program implementers for

cost effective electrification. Ultimately, this pilot validates targeted load management to

overcome infrastructure constraints, expediate fuel substitution, and contribute to

electrification at scale.

California’s decarbonization goals call for installing six million heat pumps by 2030, yet many systems include inefficient supplemental electric resistance (“strip”) heating that can substantially increase winter peak demand and energy use. This study examined the energy, emissions, and grid impacts of strip heating in California single-family homes and identified strategies to mitigate its use. Using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s ResStock database, the team modeled diverse heat pump types, building vintages, and climate zones to quantify strip-heat operation, peak demand, and emissions outcomes. The analysis evaluated temperature thresholds and control strategies that triggered strip heating and assessed transformer-level impacts under various electrification adoption and scheduling scenarios. Results demonstrated how improved heat pump performance, building envelope upgrades, and optimized controls could eliminate or minimize strip-heat operation and moderate winter peaks. Findings inform utility planning, building code development, and program design to support a reliable transition to efficient, all-electric homes.