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California Electric Homes Program

The California Electric Homes Program provides technical assistance and financial incentives to residential developers and builders constructing new, market-rate homes with all-electric appliances and equipment. The program supports all-electric new construction practices, drives energy savings, and supports California’s advanced energy efficiency policy goals.

Funded by the California Energy Commission, the California Electric Homes program incentivizes the construction of all-electric buildings and the installation of energy storage systems and other technologies that would not otherwise be constructed or installed, as specified. The statewide program offers incentives to the following market rate residential new construction building types:

Single family

Including duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, and ADUs

Multifamily

Including low-rise,
high-rise, and condominiums

Manufactured homes

Incentives

The Electric Homes program will incentivize all-electric residential new construction and energy storage measures to reduce construction costs. Our team can help participants to maximize funding by layering additional statewide and local program incentives.

Learn more

Eligibility

The Electric Homes program requires all participating projects to have 100% all-electric residential spaces, including residential common areas.

Program prerequisites include:

Communicating thermostats
Induction cooking
Heat pump water heating
Heat pump space heating
Segregated circuits
Thermostatic mixing valves

Click here to view the detailed requirements for each prerequisite

Communicating thermostats (not required for projects installing variable capacity heat pumps (VCHP))

Programmable and Wi-Fi capable, allowing occupants to remotely adjust temperature with a smartphone or other device
Auto demand response (ADR) capability

Induction cooking

Induction cooking must be permanently installed as the sole cooktop technology. No portable burners are permitted.

Heat pump space heating HVAC equipment installed must be heat pump technology. Technology that utilizes electric resistance as the primary source of heating is not eligible for the program.

Segregated circuits

CalEHP requires the segregation of the following electrical circuits in single family homes and multifamily units:

Lighting including exit and egress lighting and exterior lighting
HVAC systems and components including furnaces, package units, whole-house fans, chillers, air handling units, cooling towers, and circulation pumps associated with HVAC
Domestic and service water system pumps and related systems and components
Plug load including appliances rated less than 25 kVA
Charging stations for electric vehicles

When segregating the circuits, it is important to remember that no plug load, lighting load, or appliances (including but not limited to: dishwasher, dryer, refrigerator, clothes washer, oven, whole house fan, furnace/heat pump, water heater, sump pumps, etc.) can share a common circuit. This means that any one circuit can only serve either a lighting load, a plug load, or a single major appliance (ceiling fans with lighting should be counted as a lighting load).

The program envisions the use of conventional panelboards, fuses, circuit breakers, motor control centers, and other standard wiring methods for meeting the requirement to separate electrical loads. The requirement may also be achieved by a well-planned wiring approach, such as connecting all HVAC units to a single feeder from the service using a combination of through feeds and taps.

Thermostatic mixing valves (not required for ADUs, systems with recirculation loops, or Central Heat Pump Water Heating Systems)

CalEHP requires all unitary heat pump water heaters installed to be equipped with thermostatic mixing valves.