About the Program
This is how it works. You find your dream house and tell your builder to "make it a Guarantee Home." As your home is being built, TEP inspects 100 percent of Guarantee homes during three phases of construction to ensure that specific standards are met for maximizing energy efficiency. TEP then guarantees the home's heating and cooling operating costs, plus overall comfort, for up to five years. If your annual electric bill is over the
pre determined amount TEP will credit you the difference.
If that is not enough for you ... only a new TEP Guarantee Home with an electric heat pump and electric water heating qualifies you for the lowest residential rate on all the electricity that you use. Combine that with superior building standards, and you may save up to 35% on your electric bill.
One misconception is that a TEP Guarantee Home has to be all-electric. Actually, it can be equipped with a gas dryer and cook tops, a gas fireplace and barbecues, plus any outdoor appliances. The two components required to be electric are the water heater and the heat pump, the most efficient heating and cooling system on the market.
Guarantee homes provide more efficient, healthy and comfortable living environments by treating the structure as a complete system, where every component must work in harmony. Controlling the inside air pressure is key to overall comfort and maintaining an air quality that's safe and healthy for occupants to breathe.
The majority of American homes are constructed so tightly that they can trap stale, unhealthy air inside living areas. Research shows that indoor air quality in a conventionally built home can be 20 times worse than outdoor conditions, even in smog-plagued places like Los Angeles.
Worse yet, fluctuations in indoor pressure — initiated by shutting a bedroom door or turning on the dryer — can suck in unwanted pollutants from the outside, including carbon monoxide from the garage and pesticides that seep in where the wall and floor join. Those pollutants can then reside in the carpet.
Guarantee homes use fresh-air ventilation and pressure-management techniques that maintain better air quality and reduce the possibility for molds and allergens to linger in unsuspecting corners of a household.
The Guarantee Home design also ensures that any variation in pressurization or air leakage will always result in inside air being pushed out rather than outside air being sucked in.
The TEP Guarantee is also available through nonprofit builders Habitat for Humanity, Primavera and Chicanos Por La Causa exemplifying the versatility of the program, which works equally well with custom designs, affordable housing and large-scale production developments.
Savings based on current rate structure.
