Redwood Energy has been electrifying homes since 2011, and is a partnership of Sean Armstrong, Michael Winkler and the 22 staff of Redwood Energy that are recruited from diverse backgrounds. We are a collaborative, innovative design firm that has worked on more than 400 all-electric, solar powered apartment complexes, which was 2/3rds of the all-electric apartments built in California between 2012 and 2019, and one in four Zero Net Energy residences built North American between 2012 and 2020.
All of Redwood Energy’s multifamily developments are mixed-use, with offices, public transit hubs, retail, childcare facilities, restaurants, laundromats, and similar uses in addition to apartments. Redwood Energy maintains records of construction cost bids for HVAC, Hot Water, Solar Arrays and Appliances, and we help lower costs for our affordable housing clients with recommendations grounded in real-world costs. This data has also proven valuable to organizations like the Sierra Club, NRDC, RMI, PG&E, SDG&E and the California Energy Commission. Redwood Energy also has the largest database of circuit-level monitored residential energy use in North America—we have studied the second-by-second use of all circuits in 510 units in 9 developments since 2014. With this data we help our affordable housing clients design wisely, as well as publish in building science journals and support Code making bodies.
● Under contract with the City of San Francisco Department of the Environment, in 2018 Sean Armstrong was flown in and provided a half day of technical presentations on Building Electrification on how to avoid and minimize electric service upgrades when electrifying buildings while also meeting Equity goals. The City owns electrical infrastructure that competes with, but also uses, PG&E’s infrastructure, which makes electric service upgrades time intensive and expensive.To further assist, on a volunteer basis Redwood Energy has developed an Excel spreadsheet that calculates the National Electrical Code’s power requirements for multifamily housing of various design strategies and appliances.
● Mercy Housing has employed Redwood Energy on the $108M, 73 unit, 5 story tall Block 56, Hunters Point Shipyard community to perform comprehensive energy design services--Mechanical System Design Support, Title 24, CUAC utility allowances and Zero Net Energy solar array sizing. Redwood Energy lowered HVAC costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars with system recommendations, and secured support from San Francisco’s municipal utility for back-flowing a larger solar array into their system. Redwood Energy will commission the community with HERS, Non-Res Acceptance Testing and GreenPoint Rated certifications.
● Redwood Energy has performed energy design on numerous similar affordable housing apartment complexes in nearby cities of the Bay Area including Berkeley, Oakland, Menlo Park, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Petaluma.
● Redwood Energy has supported more than 350 applications to CTCAC and has exclusively served affordable housing developers since 2011. Redwood Energy is familiar with the funding requirements of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD), California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), California Debt Limit Allocation Committee (CDLAC) and Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC).
Redwood Energy is a certified Small (Micro) Business Enterprise by the California Department of General Services.
Redwood Energy is a 50-50 partnership between Sean Armstrong and Michael Winkler, with 9 Staff that have been affirmatively recruited. Michael Winkler is Jewish, but does not consider his life to have been affected by his Jewish ethnicity. Sean Armstrong has identified as bisexual and genderqueer since freshman year of high school in 1990 in Wisconsin, and was subjected to intense amounts of physical threats and attacks before moving to California in 1995 to complete college. Moving to California involved giving up a full academic scholarship to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he attended freshman year and was physically attacked in the honors dormitory for identifying as bisexual. Sean has worn skirts in private since 2001, and in public since 2013.
Redwood Energy has implemented an Affirmative internship and staff hiring process since 2014. This has included:
Consequently Redwood Energy’s staff has grown to be diverse from many perspectives, including:
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