The Next Generation of the American Home
A few months ago, I asked one of our engineers at Phius a question that completely changed how I think about residential construction. The question centered on my Smith House in Urbana, Ill., which is a modest 1,200-square-foot passive house with a 5-kW photovoltaic system that produces more energy than it consumes. I asked, “If the electrical grid failed tomorrow, how long could someone live there normally?”
The answer surprised me. He said with a bidirectional electric vehicle and a home energy management system, the house could continue functioning for roughly a week. This isn’t because of an enormous battery, but because the house itself requires so little energy to operate.
For years, we’ve celebrated high-performance homes because they lower utility bills, improve comfort and reduce carbon emissions.
Looking back, those benefits were setting the stage for something much larger. Energy efficiency was never the destination; it was the enabling technology. Without much fanfare, this has led to the reinvention of the American home.
For more than a century, homes have been passive consumers of energy. Today, electrification, distributed solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, intelligent controls and a more volatile climate are converging to redefine what a home can be. Instead of simply consuming electricity, the next generation of homes can produce it, store it, intelligently manage it and, perhaps most importantly, consume remarkably little of it.
The technology making this transformation possible isn’t the battery, as many might assume, but rather the building envelope.
A well-insulated, airtight enclosure with high-performance windows dramatically reduces heating and cooling demand, maintaining comfortable indoor temperatures during outages and requiring remarkably little energy to recover once power returns. The envelope quietly does the heavy lifting and everything else becomes possible because of it.
Once a home’s energy demand becomes exceptionally small, the electric vehicle takes on an entirely new role. The truck in the garage is no longer simply transportation; it becomes part of the home’s energy system. Now imagine an entire neighborhood built this way. Homes with ultra-low energy demand, rooftop solar, intelligent controls, bidirectional electric vehicles and community-scale microgrids become an integrated energy ecosystem. They reduce peak demand, store renewable energy, support the utility grid during normal operation and can temporarily island during outages. Instead of simply consuming electricity, the community functions as an integrated energy ecosystem.
This is where the conversation about high-performance housing needs to evolve.
In addition to energy efficiency, these homes provide comfort during outages, healthier indoor air, lower operating costs, smaller mechanical systems and greater flexibility for the electrical grid. Good building science also delivers durability. This includes better moisture management during increasingly intense rainfall, healthier indoor environments during wildfire smoke events and buildings designed to perform under more demanding conditions. Perhaps most importantly, it creates economic value.
For most American families, a home is their single largest investment and primary means of building wealth. As weather becomes more volatile, building performance will increasingly influence property value. Homes that are more durable, less expensive to operate and better able to withstand disruption represent fundamentally different long-term assets. That matters not only to homeowners, but increasingly to lenders, insurers, investors and appraisers.
Much of today’s production housing is concentrated in regions already experiencing extreme heat, stronger storms, flooding, wildfire smoke and growing electrical demand.
The homes built today will likely still be standing in 2080 and we already possess the knowledge to design them for the conditions they are likely to experience at that point. Quality building science allows us to achieve climate adaptation and mitigation simultaneously, placing American builders in an extraordinary position.
Few professions have the opportunity to improve so many lives through simple decisions. Every optimized wall assembly, higher-performing window, airtight enclosure, solar-ready roof, EV-ready garage and neighborhood prepared for future microgrids helps create communities built for the future.
Builders have long been tasked with solving the defining challenges of their time. This generation has the opportunity to rise to the challenge of the changing climate by building neighborhoods that are healthier, more comfortable, more durable, more resilient and better connected to the energy systems around them.
Rising to that challenge will result in better infrastructure and will shape the next generation of the American home.
By Katrin Klingenberg. She is the Executive Director of Phius. She can be reached at kklingenberg@phius.org
This is featured in the Green Home Builder July/ August issue; read the print version here.
