TechPulse 360

Home energy retrofits are beginning to seep into the American consciousness. Contractors, though still small and few in number, report encouraging growth.

The PACE financing program in San Francisco and soon elsewhere in California, should draw new builders into the business. PACE, or Property Assessed Clean Energy, allows homeowners to borrow for their energy improvements and repay the loans as if they were tax bills.

The energy audit software should enable Recurve and contractors who use to conduct more audits and run energy simulations on site.

In Washington, D.C., President Obama’s $6 billion energy retrofit program, Home Star, is moving toward a vote in the House. The program would offer $3,000 rebates for home efficiency improvements.

The stars would seem to be aligning. “We just see this industry exploding,” says Adam Winter, co-founder and senior vice president at Recurve, a San Francisco home energy remodeler. “We see such opportunity in the market right now.”

And yet, even as more Americans turn to home retrofits in the battle against global warming, the industry will face a new hurdle: getting all the work done. Up to now, energy remodeling has been a labor intensive, time-consuming process. Recuve acknowledges that the first step – a home energy audit – can be a three-hour inspection, at the end of which an inspector returns to the office, enters pencil-written notes into a computer and runs an energy simulation.

Recurve says it is time to replace manual with automation. The company announced Monday a suite of software it hopes will simplify retrofits for contracts across the country. The software is still in beta testing, but is anticipated to be available commercially by the end of the third quarter.

The program will enable inspectors to enter data in a laptop while in the field, run simulations immediately and present homeowners with instant price quotes. Instead of two or three audits a week, they should be able to four or five, says Winter.

Recurve’s goal is to be the software powerhouse selling its product (and online service) to businesses getting into energy remodeling. It has been testing the software in house for six months and for three months with six partners. As of Monday, it will expand the testing to several dozen. A handful of other programs are available to contractors, but the company claims its offering is more comprehensive.

What’s more, several other software modules are under development to expand its capabilities, including programs to keep track of customer leads, to manage projects and to enforce best practices in the field.

The company has always had the vision of being a software provider, says Winter, from the day it was founded.