Residential Smart Panel Field Demonstration

Smart electrical panels, an emerging product category, can provide a number of energy efficiency and electrification benefits to single family residential buildings. These panels replace or augment typical electrical panels and include monitoring and control capabilities of each individual electrical circuit in the home. These features allow homeowners to (1) monitor and understand their energy use similar to dedicated energy monitoring systems and (2) throttle or manage circuit-level power through software or programming. These capabilities empower occupants with knowledge of their energy usage on an appliance or circuit level and can enable electrification or installation of high-efficiency appliances in situations that may otherwise be constrained by panel or service capacity.  This field study will identify several host sites (3 -5) to demonstrate smart panel capabilities, gather occupant and installer feedback, quantify costs, and assess benefits. Tested configurations will depend on the selected host sites, but each will include accompanying EE measures enabled by the smart panel, such as a HPWH, HP, or Energy Star EV charger. Each accompanying EE measure will be assessed in terms of smart panel capabilities and how the two technologies support each other. In addition, recruitment will focus on sites which include photovoltaics and energy storage and evaluate the ability to control the DERs using the smart panel, if possible. We will attempt to use different panel manufacturers, dependent on availability and site conditions, to exercise manufacturer specific functionality. A final report will outline the qualitative and quantitative findings, presented as individual case studies in support of market adoption, future research directions, and/or program design.