Cold Climate Case Study: High-Efficiency North Dakota Twin Homes PDF

This paper describes a housing project in Grand Forks, North Dakota, that had the goal of achieving up to 50% energy savings over the 1993 Model Energy Code. Estimated combined gas and electricity utility savings over a computer model base case ranged from 25% on the Phase I homes to 35% on Phase II homes. The increased savings in Phase II came from the use of extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam sheathing and tankless gas water heating, which had simple paybacks of 8.3 and 13.3 years, respectively.