The Home Energy Rating System score that measures a home’s energy efficiency on a scale where lower numbers indicate better performance, with a typical new home scoring around 100 and a net-zero energy home scoring 0 or below, used for energy code compliance, utility rebates, and green building certifications.

HERS Rating refers to the Home Energy Rating System score that measures a home’s energy efficiency on a scale where lower numbers indicate better performance, with a typical new home scoring around 100 and a net-zero energy home scoring 0 or below, used for energy code compliance, utility rebates, and green building certifications. This standardized measurement system, developed by the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), provides homeowners, builders, and energy professionals with a reliable method to compare the energy performance of homes and identify opportunities for improvement. The HERS Rating has become an essential tool in the construction industry for demonstrating energy efficiency and meeting increasingly stringent building codes.

The primary purposes of HERS Rating include providing a standardized measure of home energy performance that allows comparison between different homes, demonstrating compliance with energy codes and green building standards, qualifying homes for utility rebates, tax credits, and financing incentives, identifying specific areas where energy efficiency improvements can be made, supporting marketing efforts for energy-efficient homes, enabling performance-based energy code compliance pathways, and establishing baseline measurements for energy retrofit projects.

The HERS Rating scale operates on a relative energy use index where a home with a HERS Rating of 100 represents the energy use of a typical new home built to current energy codes, a HERS Rating of 50 indicates the home uses 50% less energy than a typical new home, a HERS Rating of 150 means the home uses 50% more energy than a typical new home, a HERS Rating of 0 represents a net-zero energy home that produces as much energy as it consumes, and negative HERS Ratings indicate net-positive energy homes that produce more energy than they consume.

Fun Fact: The HERS Rating system was originally developed in the 1990s but didn’t become widely adopted until the 2000s when energy codes became more stringent. The most efficient home ever HERS rated scored -52, meaning it produced 152% more energy than it consumed! Interestingly, a 15-point improvement in HERS Rating typically corresponds to about 15% energy savings. The largest HERS-rated community was a 8,000-home development in California where every home achieved a HERS Rating below 50, saving residents over $12 million annually in energy costs!

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