This post was co-authored by Xun Jia and Charlie Christenson.
Electrifying your existing building can be a transformative step towards decarbonizing your portfolio and achieving long-term cost savings; however, the transition likely won’t come without technical and financial challenges. Understanding the essential steps to effectively electrify your building is crucial. Here are our top five tips to ensure a smooth and successful electrification process.
#1: GET SOME EXPERIENCED ENGINEERING BOOTS ON THE GROUND AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO STUDY ELECTRIFICATION FEASIBILITY.
Electrical capacity and infrastructure limitations often present complex and expensive obstacles. A feasibility study will identify these and find ways to minimize the required size of new all-electric equipment (a helpful cost-saving measure).
#2: INSTALL BTU METERS THIS WEEK (!) AT YOUR TOP/KEY SITES WITH SIGNIFICANT NATURAL GAS USAGE.
Properly sizing the new electric equipment based on actual heating demand is key to avoid hefty capital investment for electrification upgrades. Installing BTU meters on site as soon as possible enables key sizing decisions to be informed by real, measured heating demand in the building. The installed meters can also provide valuable long-term performance data for performance tracking and improvements.
#3: USE THE METER DATA TO RIGHT-SIZE YOUR NEW SYSTEM.
If your existing building has a 1 MBtu gas boiler, don’t just assume that you’ll need a 1 MBtu heat pump to replace it. That’s way too expensive and likely unnecessary since existing gas boilers may be oversized for the load. When designers specify heating equipment for a building, they typically account for safety factors and margins of error that lead to oversizing equipment. This, coupled with other cost-effective building upgrades, can help you avoid expensive and complicated infrastructure upgrades.
#4: CONSIDER HYBRID SYSTEMS.
It might be too expensive to fully replace existing gas systems with all-electric options; however, you can design a system to rely largely on electricity for base loads and then supplement that with a natural gas system for peak conditions. Even better, you can use the building’s existing gas boilers for the supplemental backup, a common approach that doesn’t require owners to replace relatively new equipment. For example, the electric system will be used for 95% of the hours, and the gas system can be used for the 5% of hours at peak. This is especially useful in extreme climates where an all-electric system may be unfeasible or too expensive. Per the latest electrification research among 259 existing commercial buildings nationwide by Center for the Built Environment, a heat pump sized to 30% of the measured heating load electrified 84% of the annual heating energy for the median building.
#5: BE REALISTIC ABOUT YOUR BUDGET.
Speaking of cost, this can be capital-intensive work. We’ve aggregated some high-level cost estimates in the table below based on a handful of recent Stok electrification projects completed or in progress in coastal California. The cost of electrification is highly site-specific based on asset-level infrastructure constraints and must be validated on a case-by-case basis. These are just rough numbers to help you develop initial budgets or compare the cost of electrification to other decarbonization investments.
Electrification Project Cost Example
*Note that when thinking about the implied cost of carbon, we have to understand that we get those carbon reductions every year after a one-time capex investment. The $800 – $1,500/MTCO2e-yr figure listed here assumes a 20-year project life.
Successfully electrifying your existing building portfolio requires careful planning, informed decision-making, and a realistic approach to budgeting – and engineering expertise to guide you through the process. By implementing these top five tips, your team can navigate the complexities of electrification and drive toward decarbonization at scale. Reach out to our team to discuss how to electrify your portfolio, and listen to the recording of Stok’s Charlie Christenson’s session at IMN’s ESG & Decarbonizing Real Estate Forum for more on these five tips and how to take action to decarbonize now.
