Under the Hood: How We Crafted Your Electrification Roadmap®

Posted on August 16, 2023February 12, 2024

Beginnings are tough—whether it’s writing that first draft or moving to a new city, the hardest part often lies in knowing where to start. This can be especially true when it comes to home electrification. Electrifying your home is a big project with many potential routes to take, so picking a place to begin can be, well, overwhelming. That’s where our new product, Your Electrification Roadmap® (YER), comes in.

More than just a product, it’s our vision to be the “easy button” for upgrading to a climate-friendly home. With YER, we create a personalized roadmap that is tailored specifically to your home and your goals. Our objective? Make the process of becoming climate-friendly seamless and hassle-free.

But we recognize you may find yourself wondering – how did they arrive at this recommendation? In this blog post, we’ll delve into the methodology behind the logic that guides our suggested routing steps and the metrics that fill up your electrification progress bar. Our aim is to equip you with a comprehensive understanding of how YER can shape your electrification journey from beginning to end, with Elephant Energy guiding you every step of the way. Let’s dive in!

Routing Logic: Guiding Principles for Sustainable Living

The order of the steps on Your Electrification Roadmap® is guided by four fundamental principles: (1) fixing what’s broken, (2) building science best practices, (3) your preferences, and (4) reaching the end goal: a climate-friendly home.

Let’s break down even further why these principles are considered in the order that they are:

1. Fix What’s Broken:

Fixing any broken systems in your home is the first priority. Promptly restoring essential functionalities like hot water supply ensures comfort and convenience while still working to reduce your carbon emissions.

2. Building Science Best Practices:

Our next important focus revolves around adhering to the best practices in building science. This involves services such as weatherization and solar integration, but why is this so important? Let’s take a look.

Weatherization:

We advocate (strongly!) for weatherization as the first step towards electrification. No matter how you heat your home, you’ll want to consider weatherization. Weatherization is the process of modifying a building to reduce energy consumption and optimize energy efficiency. How? Typically, it entails adding insulation and air sealing. Both measures enable you to heat and cool your home in the most efficient way possible.

Solar integration:

To ensure optimal solar integration, we place solar installations towards the end of your roadmap. This approach provides a better understanding of your full electrical load before recommending the most suitable solar system. Wondering why you should electrify before installing solar? Take a look at our previous blog post, Heat Pump Before Solar Panels: Why It’s the Smart Choice, to learn more. If you already have solar panels, our routing logic assumes that your electrical needs are fully covered. In some instances, however, it may be the case that you need to increase your array to meet the needs of a fully electrified home.

Optional electrical service upgrade:

While we may suggest an optional electrical service upgrade in some cases, in most instances, it’s not necessary – that’s especially true where the electrical capacity is already 125 amps or more. In homes with less than 125 amps, we try to offer creative and budget-friendly solutions designed for your home, aiming to make electrification possible without immediately opting for an upgrade.

3. Homeowner Preference:

We have two main priorities when it comes to you, the homeowner: understanding your preferences and fitting within your budget. If you’re enthusiastic about adopting specific electrified systems, like a heat pump, we try to prioritize those choices to kickstart your electrification journey (unless we believe there is a more important step that you should take first, like weatherization!). If your budget is guiding where you’d like to start, then we take that into consideration too. Our approach is all about aligning with your needs while also doing what we think is best for both you and the planet.

4. Reaching The End Goal: A Climate-Friendly Home:

We aim to provide a comprehensive roadmap for transitioning off of all fossil fuel systems, even if you don’t place to tackle those steps until later on. Additionally, we encourage proactive replacement of older systems with electrified alternatives to increase your home’s sustainability. Our ultimate goal is to guide you toward full electrification, ensuring no stone is left unturned on your path to sustainable living.

Curious as to why this is so important? Read our case for accelerating home electrification here.

The Methodology Behind The Metrics: Electrification Progress and Carbon Footprint

With YER, we introduce two critical metrics: Electrification Progress and Carbon Footprint. These metrics are interconnected and represent two key aspects of sustainable living in your home.

Electrification Progress

There’s a lot wrapped up in the question, “how far along am I in my electrification journey?” (or perhaps more importantly… “how much further do I have to go?”). To help you gain clarity, we designed a progress bar at the top of Your Electrification Roadmap. As you electrify more of the things in your home the progress bar fills up towards 100%. We want to make sure you understand how it’s getting there.

Electrification Progress is a directional metric that measures how close you are to achieving whole-home electrification. We’ve designed a points-based system to calculate your progress. We categorize systems in your home into small, medium, and large groupings based on cost, size, and installation time. Each electrified system earns you points (L=4, M=2, S=1), while non-electrified systems receive 0 points.

In addition, we exclude any systems that may not be relevant to your home; for example, if your home does not have a fireplace, then we exclude that system from the point calculation entirely – so that your progress bar accurately reflects the electrification opportunities within your unique home. The below table depicts the criteria used to determine the size of the given system:

Size Vs. Factor	S	M	L
Cost	Less than $5,000 before rebates	$5,000-10,000 before rebates	More than $10,000 before rebates
Installation Time	Less than one day	One to two days	More than 2 days
Impact (Estimated annual carbon footprint reduction)	Less than 5% decrease	5-10% decrease	Greater than 10% decrease

_{NOTE: Some systems may fall into various buckets based on the above criteria. In those instances, we’ve selected the “size” it most closely matches.}

To determine your Electrification Progress, we divide the sum of points for all your electrified systems by the total potential points if you electrified all your systems. This metric provides a clear and tangible measure of your journey towards a climate-friendly home.

Carbon Footprint:

Your Carbon Footprint represents the annual carbon emissions resulting from operating your home’s systems. This metric considers the metric tons of carbon released during the operation of each system.

To calculate your Carbon Footprint, we sourced data from the EPA on residential energy usage for the year 2020, averaged across all states. For systems still reliant on fossil fuels, such as a gas heater, we apply the average emission data to calculate your carbon footprint. We also consider a baseline electricity usage for things like lighting and refrigeration. If you have a rooftop or community solar, we offset the carbon footprint of electrified systems, assuming your solar array fully covers your electricity needs.

Wrapping Up:

We are so excited to share Your Electrification Roadmap® with you, and hope that you find it to be a helpful tool in starting (or continuing) your journey to a climate-friendly home. We’re here to support you every step of the way!

We’re always learning and appreciate your feedback, so if you have any thoughts about how we could make this better, please let us know! And , if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us here.

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Ready to get started? Click here to get Your Electrification Roadmap®, personalized specifically to you and your home’s needs.

Associated Press

Biden’s next climate hurdle: Enticing Americans to buy green

Posted on February 3, 2023February 8, 2024

President Joe Biden persuaded Democrats in Congress to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to fight climate change. Now comes another formidable task: enticing Americans to buy millions of electric cars, heat pumps, solar panels and more efficient appliances.

It’s a public relations challenge that could determine whether the country meets Biden’s ambitious goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

Relying on tax credits and rebates made the climate legislation — it was approved in August with only Democratic votes — more politically palatable than regulations that force wholesale changes in polluting industries.

But it also means the administration’s battle against global warming will be waged “one household at a time,” said Shannon Baker-Branstetter, who works on energy issues at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank closely aligned with the White House.

Continue reading “Biden’s next climate hurdle: Enticing Americans to buy green”

Colorado Sun

Heat pumps are having a moment in Colorado, but do they really work in the bitter cold? Yes.

Posted on February 3, 2023February 8, 2024

There was a touch of anxiety in the home of Jon and Rachel Rea as a bomb cyclone, with its plummeting subzero temperatures, approached Colorado in December, for the couple no longer had a gas-fired furnace in their basement.

They had replaced the furnace three months earlier with a heat pump and now that new gizmo was going to face a major test. The heat pump gathers the slivers of heat lingering in the air even on a cold day, but with temperatures plunging toward 20 below zero would there be any heat left to capture?

The Reas “pre-heated” their Boulder townhouse, raising the thermostat in advance of the storm, and had the advantage of having neighboring homes on each side and new insulation in the basement.

Still, they were uncertain how their Mitsubishi heat pump would fare. The unit was rated to still work at 13 below zero. The temperature in Boulder on the night of Dec. 22 fell to 18 below.

“Overall, it was just another day,” Jon Rea said. “It was not much of an event.”

Continue reading “Heat pumps are having a moment in Colorado, but do they really work in the bitter cold? Yes.”

The Cool Down

Expert explains why 2023 will be the best year to ‘electrify’ your home

Posted on January 9, 2023February 8, 2024

As the war in Ukraine rages halfway across the world, natural gas prices have hit homeowners harder than ever. As it stands now, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that most Americans spend about $2,000 every year on home energy bills.

Natural gas is slated to become even more expensive in 2023, reaching a 15-year-high, meaning most Americans will pay more to keep their homes at a comfortable temperature.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Elephant Energy, a Colorado-based startup, is on a mission to help homeowners electrify their homes and make the process as simple as possible.

The company, founded a year and a half ago by climate-tech pros Josh Lake and DR Richardson, is providing Americans with solutions to reduce their bills while fighting the overheating of the planet at the same time.

But for a lot of Elephant Energy’s customers, helping the Earth is more of a side benefit:

“Homeowners are electrifying for different reasons. Some are climate warriors, but the majority of our customers are not,” Richardson told The Cool Down. “The majority have an old, aging water heater, furnace, or AC and want to replace it with something that has a lower operating cost.”

Longmont Leader

Home electrification sees more financial incentives

Posted on January 9, 2023February 8, 2024

With rising gas prices and unprecedented tax credits and rebates, DR Richardson of Elephant Energy believes that there’s never been a better time to consider electrifying a home.

As of 2020, 11% of Colorado households were all-electric while 82% used natural gas, according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This is compared to the 26% of households nationwide completely powered by electricity.

Richardson is one of the co-founders of Elephant Energy, a Boulder County-based company that started a year and a half ago to help homeowners along the Front Range electrify their homes.

“One of the most important levels that we have in terms of the energy transition is to electrify homes,” he said. “We have to stop burning fossil fuels in people’s homes. The good news is that’s incredibly possible. It uses existing technology, and it results in a way better outcome for customers.”

Home electrification includes things like heat pumps instead of furnaces and air conditioners, electric water heating instead of gas, electric cooking and other efficiency upgrades. Many of these technologies are not only more environmentally friendly, but cost less to operate with more efficiency, according to Richardson.