Ottawa-based custom home builder and renovator OakWood announced on Friday an agreement that will give it access to the much anticipated Tesla Powerwall.
OakWood plans to include the Powerwall as a standard feature in all of its new custom homes, starting in 2018. The Telsa product is a rechargeable battery home system that stores energy from solar panels and the power grid.
The agreement was struck with MPOWER, which is Canada’s certified installer of the Powerwall.
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The announcement is part of a larger initiative that OakWood CEO John Liptak calls “high performance homes,” which aims to build homes that embrace new technology, energy solutions and health and environmental standards.
OakWood’s partner in the initiative is Canadian businessman and personality Mike Holmes.
Together, both companies say they will source cutting-edge building and home products, evaluate them, install and validate their promised improvements.
“This initiative recognizes that many innovative products are technically complex and have major implications for planning, designing and building a major renovation of custom home,” said Mr. Liptak. “For example, adding solar panels for energy efficiency or solutions for connecting, automating and controlling devices, security systems and appliances involves new structural, engineering, electrical and complex process issues.”
Speaking at an Ottawa media conference, Mr. Holmes said there is remarkable innovation happening in the home building industry, but nobody is “putting it all together.”
“Most homeowners simply don’t have the time or technical expertise to evaluate increasingly complex products or confirm they’re realizing the performance improvements that were promised,” added Mr. Holmes.
