BONSAI Design + Build High-Performance Homes
High Performance Homes - A Case Study
The Rocky Mountain Institute recently published a study where they analyzed the costs of a new all-electric home versus a new mixed-fuel home that relies on gas for cooking, space heating, and water heating. We at BONSAI Design + Build have been designing and building High Performance all electric homes since 2013 and decided to validate this study by comparing one of our recent projects to this study.
The RMI found that a new (code built) 2,400 SF all electric home has an annual average kilowatt hour consumption rate of 15,900 kWh. They also found that a new mixed-fuel (gas and electric) home of the same square footage has an annual average usage of 550 therms (gas) + 11,350 kWh (electric) for a combined 27,510 kWh of energy usage when converted.
While gas is the cheaper fuel source and why to this point our society at large has adopted gas as the primary fuel to produce energy, this statistic alone tells us that gas fired appliances are less efficient than all electric. A fact that we at BONSAI Design + Build have understood for over a decade and why we have been at the cutting edge by designing our homes for air source heat pump minisplits systems, and hybrid hot water heaters.
As a baseline, we analyzed the consumption of a mixed-fuel antiquated building of comparable square footage, which represents the majority of building stock in Denver. The annual kilowatt hour consumption from December 2021 - November 2022 of our typical Denver home consumed 760 therms + 11,515 kWh, for a combined 33,785 kWh of inefficient and wasteful energy use. We are literally throwing money out the window…
Click below to read the full post on our White Passive Hue House and see what happened when we collected a years worth of Xcel Energy Bills...
