High Performance Policies and Setting a Single EDR1 Compliance Margin

You can now create a High Performance Policy on the Explorer! Simply navigate to policy options, select "New Construction", and then select the High Performance option. When viewing your new policy and reviewing its requirements, you may notice that the requirements set up page now looks a little different. We've made this improvement to clarify your options in configuring your policy. As you may notice, you can now select one single compliance margin for both fuel types, as recommended by the Statewide Reach Codes Team.

In this article we will cover:

When you create a policy using the High Performance Policy Option, your policy will be configured to have a single compliance margin, set to the EDR1 margin associated with the mixed-fuel efficiency + PV + battery package. While this is the default setting, as always with policy options, you are able to review and edit these default requirements after creating your policy.

While reviewing your policy requirements, you may notice that the compliance margin dropdown shows all compliance margins from packages studied for the given climate zone and building type, with some of the higher values greyed out and not selectable. This is because when you are setting a single compliance margin for both fuel types, it must be cost-effective for both fuel types. In the example below, if I wanted to set a single compliance margin at the maximum cost-effective score allowed, I would set it at 12.2 because 12.2 is the maximum compliance margin that is cost-effective for both fuel types.

Previously, setting your compliance margin was limited to the packages available in the study. This meant that, typically, there were not compliance margins for both fuel types that were an exact match.

Now, we use the packages available and model what the given intermediate value could look like to get an estimate. For example, if you set a single compliance margin to 12.2, but the all-electric fuel type only has packages with margins of 14 and 10, the Explorer models what a package in between those two at a compliance margin of 12.2 would look like.

To view this estimate while configuring your policy requirement's, look towards the bottom of the page at the Per Home Impacts section. There, you can easily take a look at what the modeled package looks like.

While setting one compliance margin is recommended, you are still able to set separate compliance margins by fuel type if desired. To do so, simply toggle on Require different minimum performance scores depending on fuel type. You are also still able to model requiring all electric construction.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at explorer@localenergycodes.com.