Solar Home of the Future, With EV in the Garage, Makes Debut

PHOTO CREDIT: SOLAR HOME & BUSINESS JOURNAL
Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris and BYD Co. Senior Vice President Stella Li show off the garage of the future in Lancaster, Calif.

By Michael Balchunas

Published July 14, 2010

The garage door rolled up at a house on a street in a middle-class suburban subdivision that could pass for almost any other in America.

And there it was. The future.

The garage had solar panels on the roof, a sleek cabinet housing a battery pack to soak up the sun's energy or store cheap late-night electricity pulled from the grid, a digital meter to keep track of what went in and what went out, and a plug-in electric car that could be driven at much less cost per mile than a gas-powered one.

SolarCity
joins with
Lancaster,
Calif., to
offer
reduced-price
solar.

PHOTO CREDIT: SOLAR HOME & BUSINESS JOURNAL
Thomas DiPrima of KB Home explains the
components of future home electrical
systems, including a solar inverter and a
lithium battery pack in black cabinet.

KB Home, the multistate builder, and BYD Co., the China-based company that is seeking to become, literally, a household name in the United States through home solar, battery systems, plug-in cars and modern lighting, showed off the garage and home of the future in Lancaster, Calif., whose mayor has been working overtime to make it the city of the future.

After press conferences Monday, when a new local solar initiative was launched, and Tuesday, when the electricity system of tomorrow was shown – the first of its kind in the world – it all was looking not only possible, but perhaps inevitable.

That KB Home's Alamosa subdivision – "Own from the high 100s," the sign says – was the demonstration site is key to understanding what's afoot. The idea is that in the not-too-distant future, not only will solar electricity and electric cars be affordable, but they will cost less than utility electricity and combustion-engine vehicles, making them the most affordable option for a vast population.

"If you remember our first cellphones, they were like a big backpack that you carried around and were very expensive," said Thomas C. DiPrima, executive vice president of KB Home's Southern California division. "Now they give the phones away." Once the cellphone shift got under way, it didn’t take long to saturate the world.

That's also the timetable that R. Rex Parris, Lancaster's gang-busting, God-boosting, conservative Republican mayor, foresees for solar and what China is calling the "new-energy" approach.

"This is truly a world-changing event," Mr. Parris said the day before the home of the future was opened for dignitaries and the media to see. "Tomorrow is the day that the first house in America opens up that is affordable, and that produces more power than it consumes, and reduces pollution. And it's here in Lancaster, so people don't expect it."

PHOTO CREDIT: SOLAR HOME & BUSINESS JOURNAL
BYD's e6, an all-electric vehicle, has a
maximum range with a full charge of about
200 miles. Its battery pack can store 60
kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is about
three days of usage in the average
California household.

Mr. Parris, head of a high-profile law firm in the Antelope Valley in northern Los Angeles County, has gained a measure of notoriety for past remarks about keeping urban gangs out of Lancaster and about "growing a Christian community." Only rarely does he hesitate to speak his mind.

"That is just such horse---- and you can quote me on that," he says of the common perception that solar electricity is the province of liberals and Democrats, causing some Republican leaders to shun it. "Making America prosperous is an American idea. I don't believe that the Democrats have any more of a unique grasp of it than Republican leadership. I get so tired of political parties grasping at ideas, saying 'It's my idea.' There are good ideas and bad ideas. And good ideas are for all of us."

Stella Li, senior vice president of BYD Co., a prominent Chinese manufacturer of batteries, solar modules and new-energy vehicles and a company in which legendary investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate holds a stake, was full of praise Tuesday for Mr. Parris' ideas about Lancaster's and America's energy future, which he is sure will be chock full of solar energy – and, he hopes, jobs.

"I was really impressed by the government's efficiency here," she said. "I was so impressed that the mayor himself is so involved in the process of assisting business. I think there's a great opportunity here."

It was her second public trip to the city to show off the company's lithium home battery system, which in the KB model home stores 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity, about a half-day's typical household usage in California, and which in the future will seamlessly make most power outages a problem of the past.

Although the home battery pack is the same type used in BYD's and most other plug-in vehicles, it is tweaked toward lower-level energy discharge over longer time periods than the automotive battery packs, which are engineered to provide the rapid high-power discharge needed to quickly accelerate a multi-ton vehicle from a dead stop, repeatedly. The home battery pack is designed to last at least 25 years, Ms. Li said.

She seconded Mr. Parris' assertions that the new-energy events occurring in Lancaster are momentous.

"We are the first ones to commercialize this kind of house in the world – not just in California – in the world," she said.

The home battery packs, Ms. Li said later, mean that "you can store the electricity off-peak in the evening and then release energy during the peak times," in essence, buying low and selling high.

That's important, Mr. DiPrima of KB Home said, because utilities are moving toward time-of-use rates, in which electricity used at peak times will cost much more than energy provided deep in the night. Utilities have long paid for electricity this way themselves, but until the advent of digital "smart" meters it was not possible to charge customers differing rates based on when power is drawn.

More than one utility company has referred to time-of-use rates as reflective of "real world" pricing. What this also means is that in many places, the cost of solar electricity is already more competitive with utility-supplied electricity than many think. In California, electricity use often peaks sometime between 2 and 6 p.m. The production of solar photovoltaic systems peaks somewhat earlier but continues until the sun sets, generating energy at the times when it is valued the highest. Solar photovoltaic systems do not generate electricity at night, when it is at its cheapest because of limited demand.

Battery systems allow solar or wind energy to be stored for use when the need arises. While BYD is developing home battery systems, the U.S. government has been pouring funding into research on gigantic grid-scale storage systems that could handle massive infusions of solar and wind energy.

Through careful balancing of a combination of electrical generation sources, including renewable energy, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, the electricity system could be made more efficient and cleaner, a necessity as population, economic development and energy demand increase over the coming decades.

"It's revolutionary," said Mr. Parris, referring to the KB model home, which has a sparkling BYD 3.2-kilowatt indigo-blue solar array on the back roof. At the first meeting with KB Home officials, he said, he told the company, "I want the most energy-efficient house that's affordable in the world."

PHOTO CREDIT: SOLAR HOME & BUSINESS JOURNAL
The electronic display on the BYD home
energy system. The equipment is so new
that it has not yet been edited for spelling.

Now, months after that idea was broached, "This house that you're going to see is affordable, and it is so advanced that I can't believe it's here," he said. In addition to the solar array and the battery system, the house includes a number of energy-efficiency and conservation features, from LED lights with sensors that shut them off when no one is in a room, to newly developed roof tiles that the manufacturer, Monier, says contain titanium dioxide, which has photo-catalytic properties that help break down nitrous oxide, a component of smog.

"This is very important for the world, and that is not overstating," said Mark V. Bozigian, Lancaster's city manager. "The governor's office is very excited about the project."

Joel A. Ayala, director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, said trying to "move the needle" on California's $1.85 trillion economy, larger than those of all but seven countries, is a monumental task.

"The consumer market – that's where it's going to happen," he said before examining the plug-in cars and the battery system set up in the garage of the model home. The typical owners of such a home may be able to generate an annual surplus of as much as 1,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity, above and beyond what they use, according to estimates from BYD and KB Home.

Mr. DiPrima of KB Home said the lithium battery pack "is a very safe, very compact, very quiet, very efficient system." The solar array that feeds electricity into it was able to be modestly sized because energy efficiency was designed for the dwelling from the beginning. As with all properly functioning solar PV systems, the transition from using solar to grid power occurs seamlessly. In addition, should a power failure occur, the system is capable of switching to battery backup within 13 milliseconds, a fraction of a blink of an eye.

Although such homes may be a big part of the future, it's a future that hasn't quite arrived yet. Plug-in electric vehicles from a number of manufacturers will be rolled out in the coming year, but mass production in significant numbers is not expected to begin until at least 2012, starting with the Nissan Leaf at a factory in Tennessee.

BYD, which is in the process of establishing a U.S. headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, had both its F3DM hybrid electric plug-in and its e6 all-electric vehicle operating at Tuesday's event, but the cars will not begin to arrive at dealerships until later this year and in 2011.

KB Home's Lancaster project is an experiment. Owners of the first four homes equipped with solar PV and battery systems will supply details of their electricity usage patterns to the company for study.

"The first goal was to show that this could be done, and the second goal is to show that we can do it with production homes," Mr. DiPrima said. "Very shortly, we're going to be building these homes in production." KB is just one of many homebuilders now moving aggressively to incorporate solar PV systems among energy-saving features in new homes in California and other states. 

"The more competition we create, the more we can drive down the cost so that this is affordable to every American," Mr. DiPrima said, adding that homes such as those in the Alamosa subdivision are aimed at middle-class workers. "It's what the American Dream is all about," he said.

Mr. Parris has wholeheartedly embraced the idea that an energy transition is getting under way, and that his city is helping to lead it.

"This is one small house that will change the world," he said.