Skip to main content
Project Info COMPLETE Project Title

Residential Electrical Service Upgrade Decision Tool

Project Number ET23SWE0021 Organization SWE (Statewide Electric ETP) End-use Whole Building Sector Residential Project Year(s) 2023 - 2024
Description
Meeting the state’s climate and clean air goals requires electrification of the existing residential housing stock. Residential electrification is often erroneously assumed to require electrical panel and service upgrades in dwellings that currently have less than 200A of capacity. Under this assumption, a substantial minority (30-40%) of all dwellings in the state of California would require costly and time-consuming panel and service upsizing, representing $25-40 billion dollars of investment. These upgrades will also impose additional stress on the electrical grid, requiring substantial upstream investments by utilities and ratepayers. This represents a major bottleneck to rapid and equitable building electrification. This path poses an especially large burden on the state’s disadvantaged communities and tenants in older single-family and multifamily housing, who are more likely to have inadequate electrical infrastructure. The proposed project’s goal is to leverage current research and practices to provide a “Residential Service Upgrade Decision Tool,” hereafter referred to as “Tool”, focused on existing residential single-family and multifamily buildings. The Tool is aimed at utilities, homeowners, contractors, regulators, and policy makers, and will include several decision-trees providing guidance on when to upsize electrical panels and service versus alternatives to manage available panel and service capacity to electrify homes. The Tool will provide differentiated information based on the intended audiences. For example, a homeowner will be able to assess the likely need for a panel/service upsizing or alternatives to avoid the same at their individual home. A contractor may use the Tool to view several scenarios for homes they typically service to estimate which of their projects will likely need panel/service upsizing or avoid it. Utility and policy makers will be able to run scenarios allowing them to estimate the potential needs at a statewide, utility specific or locational basis based on input assumptions on home size, location, existing panel capacity and likely electrification upgrades. The Tool will also be differentiated based on whether it is for a single-family home versus a multifamily building. 
Project Report Document
Loading PDF Preview...
Industry
I have read and accept the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
  • Pacific Gas & Electric Company logo
  • Southern California Edison Company logo
  • Southern California Gas Company logo
  • San Diego Gas & Electric Company logo
  • Sacramento Municipal Utility District logo
  • Los Angeles Department of Water and Power logo
  • CEC logo

Copyright © 2024 Energy Transition Coordinating Council. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

The ETCC is funded in part by ratepayer dollars and the California IOU Emerging Technologies Program, the IOU Codes & Standards Planning & Coordination Subprograms, and the Demand Response Emerging Technologies (DRET) Collaborative programs under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. The municipal portion of this program is funded and administered by Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.