Builder's model home in Brandon eliminates need for electric bills

Sep 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Shannon Behnken Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Los Angeles-based KB Home plans a nationwide rollout this week of its first net-zero house, designed to essentially eliminate monthly electric bills.

It chose Brandon's Emerald Oaks neighborhood, near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Highway Road, to unveil its first model.

"This was a way for us to take it to the extreme, to show people where we think this is heading, how advanced the technology is," said George Glance, president of KB Home's Central Florida division.

The company plans to announce similar homes in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, soon and eventually to expand to other cities.

The home marks the latest in an industrywide effort to build homes that cost less to operate.

KB, Lennar, PulteGroup and some other builders now post energy ratings in some of their homes so buyers can shop for a home the way they compare gas mileage in cars. More builders also offer solar panels.

People already are living in net-zero homes, too, but most are custom homes outside the reach of middle-income buyers.

The 1,800-square-foot model home in Brandon features solar panels on the roof that convert the energy of light from the sun into electricity. The idea is for the home to produce more power than it uses.

Here's how it works:

An inverter in the garage turns the energy generated by the solar panels into power for the home.

Some days it will generate more than the home needs, and the inverter will feed the excess into the public electric grid. That will create credits with the power company.

When the sun doesn't produce enough power for the home, the homeowner will cash in those credits and pull power off the grid.

Glance said it should average out to an electric bill of zero over the year.

Here are some other features in the home:

* A water heater with an 80-gallon storage tank, fed by rain water collected on the roof.

* A counter composter, used to turn food waste into fertilizer.

* An energy-monitoring system. This enables the homeowner to go to a website that tracks energy use through a real-time utilities meter and a meter to track solar electricity production. Owners can change habits to cut energy consumption.

* A Rainwater Hog, a modular rainwater storage system. A single unit can irrigate 70 square feet year-round and provide 25 days of emergency water for four people.

* A backyard composting bin, 115 gallons in size.

Glance knows that as cool as it is to save on electricity, not every buyer is ready to shell out the money upfront.

The Brandon home costs $160,000 without the zero-energy features. With them, the price climbs $50,000.

Glance compares the extra cost to putting in a pool, but he says that may be a tough sell to consumers in this economy. Even so, he said, there are energy-conscious buyers who will pay to go green.

Today's buyers will likely need to stay in the home long term to make the cost worth it financially.

Glance estimates net-zero homeowners will save $2,400 a year in electric bills. At that rate, it would take about 21 years to make up the initial $50,000 expense.

Depending on consumers' reaction to the home, KB's Central Florida division plans to expand the concept to other Tampa Bay communities and to other parts of the state, Glance said.

He expects that as the cost of building net-zero homes falls over time, the popularity will increase.

"The technology is still coming down in cost and will be more obtainable as we go forward," he said.

"Right now, it might be more expensive potentially than somebody might be willing to invest today, but we wanted to show that this is the extreme."

The Brandon home will also be used as an educational tool. Schoolchildren will take a tour Friday. The builder plans a grand opening for the public Saturday.