ZNE Low Income Multi Family New Construction

The project is a 3 story Multi-family dwelling consisting of 46 units on an infill lot in Pomona, with an estimated construction cost of $6.1 million. The targeted occupants are low-income, with half the units designated for those that are homeless. It is planned to be built to LEED Platinum. The units vary from one to three bedrooms. It has underground parking (3 stories on top of the parking), community laundry, management offices and a courtyard area. In addition to standard LEED practices, the owner is also installing PV. The owner's construction team is in place, schedules set, and basic funding approved. The intent is to give LINC technical design assistance, as well as funding assistance to take the project from LEED Platinum to ZNE.

This report is part of a larger study, in which SCE partnered with one of California’s nonprofit affordable housing developers to take their building from a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum-rated design to Zero Net Energy (ZNE). The building is a three-story, multi-family building consisting of 46 apartment units. The common area is served by a 34.20 kW AC/33.66 kW DC rooftop community solar Photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage system. The water heating system consists of two gas water heaters serving the building’s domestic hot water needs. The main objectives and deliverables were to: -Analyze the performance of a typical new-construction multifamily property in SCE’s service territory relative to a ZNE target. -Collect data for all end uses through circuit-level monitoring. -Analyze the community’s end-use load-level performance by comparing the actual measured load shape, at a categorical level and monthly basis, against the modeled energy use. -Evaluate the central water heating system to obtain a draw schedule from flow and consumption patterns. We metered all apartment electrical panels at the circuit level, and used a current transformer configuration to monitor each panel. Monitor data was aggregated through a Senseware Modbus bridge, and backhauled through a mesh network of Senseware nodes via a 4G/LTE gateway to the Senseware cloud data platform. ONICON water and gas flow meter and Senseware data communication hardware configuration and commissioning were completed for the monitoring data to track usage patterns and develop operational strategies. We installed four ONICON SYSTEM 40 water meters and two ONICON Series F5500 gas meters. We used the collected data to illustrate the difference between modeled and measured energy performance. The following analyses are discussed in this report: 1. Aggregate the plug load impact (load factor) on overall load shapes. 2. Conduct a Measured vs. Modeled analysis comparing 2019 vs. COVID-19 2020. 3. Analyze the central water heating system and community hot water load shape. In conclusion, the data analysis from this project has many potential value propositions, such as examining future opportunities in building decarbonization, demand response, customer engagement, and energy efficiency. Project outcomes can support heat pump replacement strategies for central water heater systems, code development, decarbonization, and energy efficiency programs, and can also provide insight on new market delivery channels and incentive structures.