With Sun’s Help, New Homeowners in San Diego May Burn Power Bills

When Leopold Bomer leaves his new home to go to work each day, his house will be going to work too.

The four-bedroom, 3,200-square-foot Mediterranean will collect solar energy through roof-mounted panels, fueling his household appliances. What’s more, any surplus energy harvested during the day will be sent into the local electrical grid, causing Bomer’s meter to roll backward as he earns credit on his power bill.

Solar panels atop the home’s red-tile roof will supply about 3,000 kilowatt hours per year--about what the family of five uses.

“So the target would be at the end of the year that I wouldn’t have any electricity bill,” said Bomer, who expects to move into the new home in July.

Bomer’s new neighbors also expect to be sending power back into the grid. Their energy-efficient homes, being built on a bluff that overlooks the city, make up the largest development of its kind in the United States.

One hundred of the houses being built by Shea Homes have solar panels as a standard feature, in addition to standard electricity. An additional 160 offer them as an option.

The standard plan offered for each house calls for 12 panels to be installed, providing 1,500 kilowatt hours of energy a year. The panels add about $6,000 to the cost of the homes, which are valued between $400,000 and $600,000.

Bomer, a 40-year-old electrical engineer, was so excited about the prospect of saving energy that he asked Shea to put 24 panels on his roof, which means he’ll pay about $10,000 for them.

Until recently, cost and concerns about liability and aesthetics limited the use of solar panels in homes, said Ryan Green, a Shea Homes representative.

Shea had been considering including solar panels in a development but couldn’t do so until last year, when it found technology that would cost buyers about 1% of their total home cost, he said. The company also had to be able to guarantee the panels wouldn’t cause roofs to leak or disrupt the style of the upscale neighborhood.

Sun Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz., was able to supply a leak-resistant panel that sits flush with the roof, looking more like a skylight than the old, upraised panels of the past.

Still, Sun Systems has found it hard to persuade home buyers to invest in the technology.

“It’s so much easier to sell them upgraded carpets or counter tops,” said the company’s president, Tom Bohner. “But this energy crunch is going to change attitudes.”

The homes in Bomer’s neighborhood are selling at a rate comparable to that of regular homes. Although they would have sold anyway in housing-starved San Diego County, Green said interest in the solar option has jumped since energy prices soared last summer.

Buyers, he said, also are attracted to the homes’ other efficiency features:

* A reflective coating underneath the roof tile repels heat from the attic, reducing a home’s temperature up to 30% and lessening the need for air-conditioning.

* “Smart Glass” in the windows has insulating properties and blocks infrared and ultraviolet rays.

* Extra-efficient ductwork reduces air-conditioning leakage.

* Solar-powered water heaters cut the need for natural gas.

Green said he has found buyers’ interest in saving energy climbing even as they demand extra phone lines, more electrical outlets and four-car garages.

“There’s an enormous amount of irony,” Green said. “As our technology grows, our energy loads are going to get much higher per household.”

The solar-panel system will allow Shea buyers to save up to 80% on electricity costs. The other efficiency features alone would cut bills by 30%, the company estimates.

Shea’s project serves as a model for how builders can use energy-efficiency technology, according to Larry Zarker of the National Assn. of Home Builders Research Center in Maryland.

Home builders also are looking at other technologies that could be on the market in three to five years, he said, like hydrogen-burning fuel cells that act like batteries for each home, or roofs that act like solar panels.

And as more builders incorporate efficiency technology, the costs will drop. Already, there has been a significant decline in price from the time when solar technology, for example, was developed for the U.S. space program, said Robert Dixon, deputy assistant secretary for the Energy Department.

The department’s 10-year-old Zero Energy Homes program is working with technology companies and home builders to bring more products to market.

Bomer said his investment in extra solar panels is worthwhile.

“Some people invest money in driving a big car. I invest in saving on my electricity bill and saving the environment,” he said.

“I guess when we have neighborhood parties, we’ll talk about it and it will be a lot of fun to say my energy bill was zero.”