City of San Luis Obispo

Overview

The City of San Luis Obispo, in partnership with the Diversity Coalition, SLO Climate Coalition, and Community Action Partnership SLO, is launching a pilot focused on one of the most difficult housing types to serve with electrification: manufactured homes. These homes often present distinct engineering and installation hurdles, which leaves many income-qualified residents with fewer opportunities to benefit from cleaner, more efficient equipment. Drawing on earlier demonstration projects supported through the Department of Energy’s Buildings UP Prize, the effort will install heat pump water heaters and space heating systems in at least 15 manufactured homes, paired with energy monitoring and hands-on support, so residents can use the new systems with confidence.

The project is also intended to turn early experience into something others can build from. The team will capture lessons about how to choose and install heat pump technologies in manufactured housing and create a clear model for customer-facing energy advising services. In two of the selected communities, that work will unfold alongside utility system upgrades through the California Public Utilities Commission’s Mobile Home Park Utility Conversion program, helping create conditions that make electrification more affordable and easier to navigate for residents.

Research Questions:

• Which engineering, electrical, and structural factors most affect whether heat pumps can be installed in manufactured homes—and how can installers navigate those challenges more effectively?
• What outreach, enrollment, and community-engagement practices are most effective at helping manufactured-home residents move from initial interest to participation, particularly in communities with different levels of prior exposure to electrification and different levels of trust in utility or government programs?
• How does real‑time energy monitoring and post‑installation support influence trust, satisfaction, and long‑term adoption?

Market Barrier

California has more than 435,000 manufactured housing spaces, but they remain one of the more difficult housing types to serve through building electrification. Many units are older, were built to less efficient standards than site-built homes, and have physical conditions that complicate retrofit work, including limited equipment space, weak or missing insulation, outdated wiring, and constrained electrical service. In mobile home parks, those issues are often compounded by master-metered utility infrastructure and substandard service capacity at individual lots, which can make even basic readiness work more complicated and harder for residents to navigate.

For income-qualified residents, these technical barriers are layered on top of financial and administrative ones. Manufactured homes are often financed and treated differently from site-built housing, which can make it harder to access affordable capital for upgrades. At the same time, residents may have limited ability to absorb upfront costs, uncertainty about future bills, and little access to trusted, practical guidance on what electrification would actually require in their home. Because heat pump retrofits in manufactured housing are still not standardized at scale, both residents and contractors face uncertainty about feasibility, sequencing, and cost, which slows adoption even when incentives or utility upgrades are available.

Proposed Solution

The project team will bring a full-service electrification model directly into manufactured home communities, combining trusted outreach, home-specific technical assessment, low- or no-cost installation, and ongoing resident support. The pilot will install heat pump water heaters and heat pump space-heating systems in at least 15 manufactured homes, while using established low-income qualification pathways to identify eligible households and ensure residents receive the audits, protections, and retrofit scopes needed to participate safely and successfully.

The project will also provide a full year of energy monitoring, bill protection, and hands-on coaching so residents can understand how the systems perform and use them with confidence. Just as importantly, the team will document installation conditions, upgrade needs, resident experience, costs, and outcomes of heat pump deployment in manufactured housing and a clearer model for customer-facing energy advising that other communities can adapt.

Theory of Change

If programs remove the biggest pain points—permit costs, contractor coordination, confusing incentives, and fear of higher bills—manufactured home residents will be far more willing and able to adopt heat pump technologies. By documenting real‑world costs, installation hurdles, energy impacts, and resident experiences, this project can help unlock equitable electrification for manufactured homes across California.

Project Status:

In Progress

Housing Type:

Mobile and Manufactured Homes

Technology:

Heat Pump HVAC and Heat Pump Water Heaters

Location:

San Luis Obispo