Smart Energy Experience Technical Information

A Smart Energy Home for Your Future

SCE’s interactive smart technology display brings California’s residential construction standards up close. Discover how smart grid technologies can help better manage your energy use and provide smarter, cleaner, more reliable power.

About the Smart Energy Experience®

Located at SCE’s Energy Education Center in Irwindale, the Smart Energy Experience® is a full-scale, operational demonstration home. Visitors can explore displays to understand how the building and smart technology manage energy use, lower costs, decrease carbon footprints, and reduce grid demand. This interactive environment showcases the home of tomorrow, featuring smart grid technologies as part of an automated, intelligent power delivery system for a smarter, cleaner, and more reliable energy future.

Whether you're a homeowner, renter, builder, architect, contractor, or developer, the Smart Energy Experience® offers valuable insights. Visitors can take guided or self-guided tours and experience a full, simulated day in a home demonstrating the latest energy-saving opportunities.

Learning Through See, Touch and Feel

Explore exciting technologies that connect with SCE’s energy-saving incentive programs to enhance home efficiency, and check out our interactive 3-D, life-size residential high-performance building envelope displays to see the techniques and materials used in constructing high-performance walls and attics.

Technologies on display include:

Smart communicating devices
Home energy management systems
Small-scale renewable generation (such as solar power)
Residential Level 2 Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment
Vehicle Supply Equipment
Best practices for sustainable and energy-efficient home design and construction

Energy-efficient equipment on display includes:

Active battery storage
Heat pump water heater
Heat pump Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system
Heat pump clothes dryer
Induction cooktop

Residential High-Performance Envelope

To support California’s goal of achieving Zero-Net Energy (ZNE) for all new-construction homes, and to show our visitors what’s involved in building homes to reach this goal, we developed an interactive 3-D, life-size Residential High-Performance Envelope Display to provide a view of the actual materials needed to construct high-performance walls and attics in compliance with current and future energy codes.

Cool roof-rated asphalt shingles, advanced framing, raised heel truss, and insulated header
Wall and roof Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), rain screen, stone veneer
Rafters and beam, duct in conditioned space, framing air seal, vinyl window, radiant barrier
Insulated roof tile, PV panel, spray foam/sealed attic, drywall clips, insulating stucco
Metal Spanish tile, composite window, window flashing details, exterior rigid insulation
Plumbing and wiring penetration air seal, switch box air seal, mineral wool insulation
Insulated clay roof tile, cementitious spray foam, fiberglass frame window,
Wedge above roof insulation, laminated radiant barrier, wainscoting, window buck

Building contractors, developers, designers, architects, and students can use these innovative, hands-on modules to get an understanding of what goes into creating a ZNE building.

The Smart Energy Experience® + Energy Education Center Classes

Are you an architect, contractor, designer, or developer looking for energy solutions for your residential, commercial, or institutional project? We’re here to help. SCE’s Energy Education Center courses cover a wide array of energy-related topics relevant to the work that professionals face each day.

We pair our classes with the Smart Energy Experience’s® displays, which showcase energy-efficient equipment and hands-on construction techniques to produce a dynamic and immersive educational opportunity.

Learn about cutting-edge technology in the classroom and see it in real-time in the Smart Energy Experience®! Our class categories include:

Agriculture, Pumps & Irrigation
Building Performance
Electrification/Decarbonization
Energy Codes & Standards
Energy Processes & Technology
Home Performance
Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC/R)
Lighting
Renewable Energy & Sustainability