A Kelowna partnership is trying to design the most efficient homes for consumers
It can be difficult if not impossible to calculate actual savings from using energy efficient appliances in your home, but a Kelowna partnership is trying to do that for you.
The Wilden Living Lab is a research project in collaboration with UBC, Okanagan College, FortisBC, AuthenTech Homes in the Wilden community to enhance energy efficiency in Kelowna homes.
“We’re trying to build homes that are affordable for families in Kelowna, which is very hard these days,” director and co-chair Karin Eger-Blenk said. “We’re finding ways to invest in energy efficiency in homes that will pay back through energy bills.”
Since 2015, two homes have been built to determine the best energy efficiency in single-family residential homes.
The data from the homes is collected through sensors, and homeowners must consent to having their energy use monitored for three years.
“It’s homes that are being built in real life, and the people have their energy consumption monitored on different levels,” Eger-Blenk said.
They monitor energy used for heating water, heating in the winter, and how much energy is used for air exchange.
“We want to know how we can build the best home for the money,” Eger-Blenk said.
Their latest experiments looked at hot water. The first home researched, called the home of today, had a conventional electric water heater that stores water in an insulated tank. In the second home, called the home of tomorrow, the water heater used a heat pump to extract heat from the surrounding air and stores the water in a tank, according to the Wilden Living Lab website.
The newest part of the project, the third house, will be a net-zero home, so it should not use more energy than it creates.
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The energy that the home needs will be created through solar energy and an air source heat pump and a component of renewable natural gas to run a gas furnace.
The team hasn’t found what they are looking for yet with the project and are hopeful the third house will be the missing component to the research.
The team found that the investment of energy in the home of tomorrow took too long to pay back and would be difficult for people to choose that option.
“We need to find a better way in building an energy-efficient home,” Eger-Blenk said. “The final findings are yet to be published. We’re not sure if our research will be done, there might be the fourth house, it depends on what we can make out of this last step.”
Another factor is that with a carbon tax, any energy that has a carbon footprint will be more expensive, however the technology that is used will go down in price when more is being used, she explained.
The ultimate goal for Wilden with the project is to ensure the advice they give their clients about their homes is future-proof with a high resale value and high-performance rate.
“We want to be in a position where we can give them advice to make an informed decision on where to put their money if they want to enhance the energy efficiency of their home,” Eger-Blenk said.
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