Page 45 - Green Builder January 2017 Issue
P. 45
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CREDIT: BREEZES MUIRHEAD
Burb poster child. Darwin, Australia’s Breezes Muirhead development, with rooftop solar, an electric car charging station and smart
electrical system in every home is a model for builders of “solar suburbs.”
more than enough electricity than they need and send the surplus to CREDIT: TESLA MOTORS And there’s the rub. For America’s sprawling suburbs to become
the city in the batteries of electric cars driven by commuters. Hugh environmentally friendly—let alone generators of excess energy—
Byrd, a professor at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, distributed solar power, electric cars and battery storage will all have
who led the research, says another study found similar results for to become mainstream. That will probably happen, but not in the
San Francisco. But, he added, realizing the clean-energy potential near future.
of suburbs will require, among other things, cheaper batteries with
greater range to increase the market penetration of electric cars. BEYOND THE NICHE
Powering up. Tesla’s Powerwall battery is one of several battery Across the U.S., distributed solar power—that is, photovoltaic panels
systems that are raising the solar bar. installed on homes and businesses—is enjoying explosive growth,
expanding by more than 50 percent annually for a decade, according
to market researcher Clean Edge. SolarCity, the leading home solar
company, says it aims to serve 1 million residential by 2018, and it’s
got plenty of competition.
But distributed solar remains a niche business in every state except
Hawaii, where 13 percent of residential electricity customers have
installed solar. (California’s next, with 3 percent.) Nationally, about
734,000 homes—less than 1 in 100—have on-site solar, according to
GTM Research’s U.S. Solar Market Insight report. And a 2015 survey
of U.S. homeowners by Clean Edge and SolarCity found that just 6
percent said they plan to install home solar in the next year, fewer
than those preparing to buy LED bulbs, smart thermostats and
efficient water heaters.
(Some other countries, it must be said, are making far more
progress. Germany, whose population of 80 million is one-quarter
that of the U.S., has 1.5 million photovoltaic systems installed, twice
as many as the U.S. Germany now generates nearly 7 percent of its
electricity from solar power. In Australia, one in five homes now
have photovoltaic panels.)
Another key element of the solar suburb ecosystem—electric
cars—has proven to be a hard sell. Back in 2011, President Obama
called for 1 million electric plug-in cars (as opposed to hybrids like
the Toyota Prius) to be on America’s roads by 2015. But by 2015, we
were not close: Cumulative sales (were) less than 375,000, reports
the Electric Drive Transportation Association.
www.greenbuildermedia.com January/February 2017 GREEN BUILDER 43
