New Solar Homes Partnership - NSHP
The New Solar Homes Partnership (NSHP) was introduced with the CSI in January of 2007. The NSHP is managed by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and was designed to provide financial incentives and other support to home builders. The program aims to encourage homebuilders to construct new and energy efficient solar homes all over the state of California and intends to help create a self-sustaining solar market. The NSHP has a $ 400 Million, 10 year budget and specifically targets new residential construction in single family, multi-family, and low-income housing markets. The CEC partners with builders and developers in order to reach the goal of installing high-performance solar energy systems on half of all new homes build in California by the end of 2016, while establishing a self-sustaining market for solar homes that incorporate high levels of energy efficiency.
The NSHP rewards the installation of high performance solar systems and is the prerequisite for additional funding for delivering a certain level of energy efficiency. The latter are offered by energy efficiency programs of investor owned utilities (e.g. residential new construction programs).
While the California Energy Commission continues to provide oversight of the NSHP, the program administration has been transferred to the public utilities for their respective service areas (Pacific Gas and Electric Company (June 2008), Southern California Edison Company (April 2008), and San Diego Gas & Electric Company (March 2008)).
