HVAC / Air / Heat
Home Load Control: Extending Smaller Electric Panels as Electrification Expands
For this report, we explored the impact of increased electrification on homes with smaller electric panels (100A). We examined second-by-second data from our research network in over 400 homes over the last three years. We scanned more than 12.6 billion data points and analyzed all main breaker loads that exceeded 20kW – a level […]
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Smart Cooling: Leveraging Technology and Behavior to Stay Cool and Reduce Energy Demand
The COVID-19 pandemic altered daily life around the world, including changes in how people live, work, and consume energy. As people spent more time at home, Pecan Street found several opportunities to examine home energy trends and conservation opportunities. Energy used for heating and cooling homes (heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC) is […]
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Heat Pump Primer: Understanding the Technology That Will Drive Decades of Residential Decarbonization
Residential heat pump installations are poised to rapidly accelerate over the next decade as part of the effort to electrify homes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As of 2020, only 14% of America’s 124 million housing units used heat pumps for space heating. To help households make sense of this technology and understand system […]
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Cooling a Warming Planet: What Homes in Texas and New York Can Teach Us About Cooling Demand Around the Globe
Pecan Street draws on our network of volunteer research participants to examine cooling loads in different parts of the United States. Our data show that cooling loads differ based on location, building characteristics, cooling systems, and human behavior. Understanding how these factors interact will be crucial to managing cooling load growth over the next […]
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Untapped in Texas: How Solar, EVs and Demand Response Could Fortify the Grid
Texans will never forget February 2021. Winter Storm Uri crippled the state’s natural gas supply and sparked a cascading failure of our electricity system. More than 4 million homes and businesses lost power, many of them for days. More than 700 people died. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimated the electricity crisis cost the […]
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Using Big Data to Maximize Microgrid Performance
The concept of microgrids is simple. Designing a microgrid to meet a variety of potential goals and to deliver power during emergencies is more complicated. Based on Pecan Street’s analysis of the high-resolution data from our research network, this paper examines how high-frequency circuit-level electricity data produced by Pecan Street’s residential energy network can help […]
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Distributed Energy Toolkit for Historically Black Colleges & Universities
Microgrids powered by clean, distributed energy resources (DERs) that supply continuous power during grid outages, can increase grid resiliency and security, and provide economic and environmental benefits to HBCUs by allowing participation in utility savings programs that reduce overall energy use and dependence on fossil fuel energy resources. Pecan Street developed this toolkit to support […]
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Course Correction: Residential Power Factor
To maximize the impact of efficient technologies, the industry needs to correct residential power factor. Over the past several decades, utilities, building energy managers, and homeowners have been increasingly investing in energy efficiency measures, efficient appliances and rooftop solar. These efforts have saved countless megawatt-hours of energy and millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, […]
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Addressing an Electrification Roadblock: Residential Electric Panel Capacity
By incentivizing electric service panel upgrades for existing homes and requiring larger capacity panels for new construction, we can clear the path for full residential electrification. To download the paper, please enter your name and email address below. A download link will be mailed to you.
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Charging Smart: Analysis & Recommendations for Next Generation Home EV Charging
A quintessential piece of American identity is undergoing a rapid and much-needed transformation – the automobile industry is electrifying. Major vehicle manufacturers are committing to electrify their entire fleets in the coming years, and not a moment too soon. The transportation sector has surpassed the energy sector as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, […]
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Technology Roadblocks to the Clean Energy Future
The clean energy future we’ve been promised is taking a long time to arrive. What’s standing in its way? Pecan Street examines four roadblocks that are holding back innovation and adoption of cleantech products, services and systems. The paper examines: The Lack of High-Fidelity, Widespread, Accessible Energy Data The Lack of Interoperability How Clean Energy […]
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Recommendations for Building Regional Cleantech Hubs
Backed by the Department of Energy, Pecan Street and its partners set out in 2017 to demonstrate and validate a new model for dramatically improving the effectiveness of investments in clean energy technologies and accelerating market entry of disruptive technologies. Pecan Street developed the PLATFORM for Product Launch, a program that integrates data-driven market intelligence, […]
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Exploiting the Energy-Water Nexus to Reduce Emissions and Conserve Water
Fossil fuel power plants boil massive amounts of water into steam, which spins turbines and generates electricity. Water utilities use a lot of electricity to source, treat and distribute water. The conservation opportunity of this energy-water nexus is fairly obvious: use less of one and you use less of the other. Translating that relationship into […]
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A Toolkit for Cleantech Program-Related Investments
What is the incentive for philanthropic institutions and individuals to focus their climate strategies on clean energy technology? How are these investments structured, and what tools are available to help design them? How are foundations leveraging program-related investments (PRIs) as risk capital, and what are the risks involved? Using PRIs to Accelerate Cleantech: A Toolkit […]
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Electric Texas: Emission and Grid Impacts of All-Electric Residential Heating
This paper examines the possibility of converting all residential heating in the ERCOT service area to electric. The switch could achieve significant reductions in climate and local air pollution as well as save Texans money through lower monthly utility bills. This whitepaper is based on a technical analysis conducted by IdeaSmiths. To download the paper, please […]
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Pecan Street’s Final Report to DOE
Pecan Street’s Final Technology Performance Report to the U.S. Department of Energy Pecan Street’s founding effort in 2010 was a demonstration of smart grid technology for the U.S. Department of Energy. The report was presented in February 2015. To download the report, please enter your name and email address below. A download link will be […]
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