Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) is a network of nine social enterprise non-profit owners of affordable housing located in 50 states with 90,000 units. Since 2006, Bright Power has provided a variety of energy efficiency and renewable energy services to support the preservation of these existing affordable housing properties, including:

Energy Benchmarking, Tracking, and Utility Data Analysis
Bright Power gathered information and energy bill data from over 700 multifamily properties across the country as technical consultants on this MacArthur Foundation-funded project that began in 2007. We used the data to characterize energy usage, identify performance differences between building types and locations, and highlight the properties that are the best and worst performers with suggestions on where they show potential for improvement. The result is the largest known analysis of energy usage information in privately-owned multifamily affordable housing. This data and account information has since been loaded into EnergyScoreCards, where owners and managers can track performance, identify outlier bills, and rigorously compare energy usage between properties and before and after energy retrofit.

Energy Audits
Through funding from Enterprise Community Partners, Bright Power performed over a dozen energy audits on existing SAHF-member multifamily properties in Florida, Indiana and Oregon. These energy audits have uncovered a number of cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities in systems such as building envelope/air-sealing, HVAC, lighting and appliances. The energy audits have been used as part of the refinancing process for these properties.

Renewable Energy Feasibility Analysis
We have worked with several SAHF members to assess the feasibility of solar and wind energy installations at their properties. For several Massachusetts properties, we identified funding available from state agencies and wrote grant proposals for renewable energy projects. Two successful proposals provided the funding for feasibility studies of:

• 40 kW solar PV system at Bridle Path Apartments, Randolph, MA
• 600 kW wind turbine at Fairweather Apartments, Salem, MA

The PV system proved feasible and is now installed; the wind resource was insufficient to make the wind project feasible.