SMUD and Woodside Homes Agree to Build Almost 1,500 Solar Homes (Calif.)

[jpak]

http://www.solarbuzz.com/News/NewsNAPR1044.htm

Nearly 1,500 solar-powered, super energy-efficient SolarSmart homes will be built in the Sacramento area in an agreement between utility, SMUD and homebuilder Woodside Homes. The deal is the largest to date between any utility and homebuilder in the United States.

<snip>

Residents of these SolarSmart homes may save as much as 60 percent annually on their electric bills through the energy-efficient features and the solar roof tiles that generate electricity. SolarSmart homes also boast many energy efficiency measures to help customers reduce their bills year-round. The energy efficiency measures include efficient HVAC systems, radiant barriers in attics, added insulation, duct sealing and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting.

The SMUD customer community also benefits from solar home developments in terms of lower power costs for all customers. SolarSmart homes save and produce the most energy on hot summer days, so less electricity will be needed to serve these homes. That is the same time when power is most expensive for a utility to buy. These new SolarSmart homes are expected to shave about two megawatts off the peak demand.

<snip>

As a partner, SMUD provides incentives of about $6,000 per home to buy down the cost of the solar electric systems and provides rebates for energy efficiency upgrades. The rebates and incentives, combined with attractive tax credits, make the options more affordable for most homebuyers. And in a slower housing market, builders see the options as a way to offer prospective homebuyers more significant value in the form of lower energy bills and a more “green” home.

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[Mountainman]

1. Sure, with no one able to get a mortgage loan?

With millions of foreclosed homes on the market, and a backlog of 4 years of unsold homes? Why?

[XemaSab]

2. Fuck development

and fuck developers.

[NNadir]

3. Thanks for the paen to suburbia. Does this count for the brazillion solar homes that made...

...Governor Hydrogen Hummer an "environmentalist?"

More insignificant yuppie toy junk.

[jpak]

8. and where do you live???

:rofl:

[diane in sf]

4. Thanks jpak, the original solar homes built in Sac. in the 70s go for 10% above market

and SMUD is so well-run that people in the area pay 20-30% less for their electricity than most utilities in California. They did it by getting rid of their expensive and inefficient nuclear power plant and investing in conservation and renewables.

[kestrel91316]

14. NNadir's gonna MELT with a shriek when he hears that....

[diane in sf]

18. and emit a large variety of toxic gasses...

[losthills]

5. Amazing, how some people around here react to good news....

[NNadir]

6. On the other hand, it's appalling how some people embrace wishful thinking.

There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who has a sense either of scale or external costs.

I once calculated how much energy was consumed by cars driving to admire the stupid Maine Solar House.

It was an appalling calculation.

Solar energy has never produced as much energy as is required to run the servers devoted to websites promoting it, admiring it, and pretending that it is not a very, very, very, very expensive and trivial form of energy.

It is useless to do this with fundie antinukes - a fundie is a person who will insist on his dumb ass dogma no matter how much science is presented - but again, here are the numbers:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1_1.html

Do you have any idea how many MJ are contained in a gallon of gasoline?

You don't?

Why am I not surprised.

SMUD destroyed the largest form of climate change gas free pieces of infrastructure it had. Why?

Because of ignorance.

Some dumb fundie anti-nukes who can't add or subtract or compare two numbers - my kid learned inequalities in the second grade - put a bunch of solar cells outside the stupidly destroyed nuclear plant and lied about "replacing the nuculear plant."

In fact, dangerous fossil fuels replaced the nuclear plant, and there is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke on this website who has anything but gloat about the deaths that have taken place as a result.

Ignorance kills.

[losthills]

7. I rest my case...

[jpak]

9. SMUD shut down the Rancho Sucko reactor because it was a piece of shit

that ran *literally* half the time.

It was utterly uneconomic.

SMUD rules.

[NNadir]

10. At 39% capacity loading it was available twice the amount of wind power.

It was the worst nuclear power plant in North America, and it still was available twice as much as either wind or solar, which are also not economic.

It was uneconomic because it was being run by idiots.

Frankly it was idiotic to not be technically capable of running a nuclear power plant.

In fact, like all nuclear power plants that were replaced because of stupidity and ignorance, it was replaced by a dangerous fossil fuel plant.

SMUD opened a dangerous fossil fuel plant on that site in 2006. Clearly if they have just finished building a dangerous fossil fuel plant because they have no intention of phasing out dangerous fossil fuels.

This is no surprise. The anti-nuke cult is nothing more than dangerous fossil fuel apologetics.

[jpak]

11. Sorry, the Mars Hill wind farm here in Maine had a capacity factor of 37% last year

and all commercial wind farms are economic - if they weren't, there would not be 100 GW of wind power world-wide and it would not be growing by double-digit percentages each year.

and thank you for agreeing that Rancho Sucko did indeed suck...

:D

and please - tell us how NJ nuclear power plants saved the Garden State from suburban sprawl...please do...

:rofl:

[kestrel91316]

15. Oy. I swear to god you must be a 16-yr-old with a social disorder.

The name-calling is extremely immature.

[XemaSab]

12. How is paving over more farmland to build houses "good news"?

:shrug:

[losthills]

13. Rancho Cordova is not farmland.

It's a city of 59,000.
They're going to build 1400 homes regardless of this deal. The good news is that they are going to be solar smart homes. Here's why:

"Residents of these SolarSmart homes may save as much as 60 percent annually on their electric bills through the energy-efficient features and the solar roof tiles that generate electricity. SolarSmart homes also boast many energy efficiency measures to help customers reduce their bills year-round. The energy efficiency measures include efficient HVAC systems, radiant barriers in attics, added insulation, duct sealing and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting.

"The SMUD customer community also benefits from solar home developments in terms of lower power costs for all customers. SolarSmart homes save and produce the most energy on hot summer days, so less electricity will be needed to serve these homes. That is the same time when power is most expensive for a utility to buy. These new SolarSmart homes are expected to shave about two megawatts off the peak demand.

"The homes also deliver environmental benefits. They have a smaller “carbon footprint” than conventional new homes. Carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced. Cumulatively, the 1,487 SolarSmart homes could reduce carbon emissions that are equivalent to taking about 700 cars off the road or planting about 1,000 acres of trees. The Woodside Homes deal is the tenth agreement SMUD has signed with builders since last year to construct SolarSmart homes. So far, SMUD has agreements in place to build more than 4,000 SolarSmart homes. Next year, more than 30 percent of new homes in SMUD service territory will be SolarSmart."

[LeftyMom]

16. "city" is kind of a misnomer. It's incorporated now, but it's not exactly self-sufficient.

Basically, what we're looking at is building some efficient homes in a perpetually depressed (they don't call it Rancho Cambodia for nothing, folks) sprawling area of strip malls, industrial parks, and housing. Now there's two kinds of housing in Rancho- stuff that's right on the river, which is a pretty monied area, and the rest of it (I'm excluding areas that are technically in Rancho that are really f'n rural, mostly because there aren't enough people living out at Sunrise and Florin to count, and because that area has no real relationship to the rest of Rancho except a shared police presence.) Now the rest of it is hotter, drier and uglier than the rest of Sacramento suburbs, the schools mostly suck and the commute on the 50 is pure hell. Sure, people could do park and ride on RT, but the trains smell like bum piss and your car might be missing key components by the end of your work day, so I wouldn't suggest it.

For the most part, people live in Rancho because they can't swing the payments on a house in a better part of town. Well, judging by the current state of the housing market here, if you can get a mortgage, you can afford not to live in Rancho (again, excluding the houses right by the river, but that land's all filled up, and enormously expensive.) So I'm just not sure who the market is. And anybody building a subdivision of any size around here right now needs their head examined.

[diane in sf]

17. It is curious they're building now, someone told me the median home price

in Santa Rosa has fallen from $600k to $400k, and I noticed I could now afford to buy a shack there (way less that $400k--wrong side of town re: school district)) if I lose my rent-controlled flat in SF. Values might be about as bad in Sacramento as I just had a friend from SF buy a repo there so she could own a home.

Maybe its lower-cost housing, the energy efficiency would be very helpful, especially with summer cooling costs.