As solar panel manufacturers try to harvest more of the sun’s energy for less, they face increasingly diminishing returns. At roughly $1 per watt, the cost of solar modules now represents less than a third of the total cost of commercial solar installations. To cut the total cost of solar power—currently $3.00 to $3.50 per watt—bigger gains will have to come from improvements in the power electronics, wiring, and mounting systems required for solar installations.
Environmentally friendly homes can reduce inhabitants’ carbon footprints, save resources and lead the way for others to live the same way. Most of us, however, have been living in homes that are pretty standard, in that they don’t help us reduce our carbon footprints. The US Department of Energy has been trying to further green living in terms of homes and has been organizing the Solar Decathlon for a while now. The international competition is a biennial event that challenges 20 college teams to come up with conceptual homes that utilize solar energy. The teams get to work on site, detailing their prefabricated houses for 10 days in a bid to take home the Solar Decathlon title. 2012’s competition is set to begin and we’re eager to see who wins the coveted prize.
A bare, seaside landscape may be beautiful to look at, but it also creates several challenges for architects interested in building an energy-efficient home. Plus Arquitectura couldn’t rely on trees or even dunes to block the sun or the wind from entering their Y-house, so they created an interesting Y-shaped roof instead. Shaped this way, the roof not only cantilevers over the base of the house in order to provide shade for its residents, but also facilitates the easy installation of energy-generating solar panels and a rainwater harvesting system. Meanwhile, high performance windows placed strategically permit daylighting without excess radiation. The result is a rustic pine-clad home dotted with round portals of light that ensure constant views of the nearby Tunquén beach in Chile.
A news release was recently issued on California’s 10 leading residential solar cities. The information was released by solar company SunRun, citing data compiled from its PV Solar Report.
The list of top solar cities list is based on the California Solar Initiative’s (CSI) database of residential rebate reservations through August 31, 2011.
It seems like the ultimate in green technology for an emissions-savvy citizen of the 21st century: solar panels on your roof, providing carbon dioxide-free electricity whenever the sun is shining. But as huge utility-scale solar and wind projects continue to make news and the economy continues to struggle, the state of the residential solar sector in the United States remains decidedly mixed.
From the first quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter, installations of U.S. residential solar systems rose from 62 megawatts to 74 megawatts (enough to power about 15,000 homes), and the Solar Energy Industries Association reports that the first quarter of 2011 saw similar gains over the same period in 2010. Considering that the total installed solar capacity in the U.S. — residential, commercial, and industrial-scale of all types included — still hasn’t cracked 3,000 megawatts (enough to power roughly 600,000 homes), this feels like progress.
Yet if you look at residential solar’s share of the total U.S. solar market, the picture is less bright. In 2009, 36 percent of all installed solar systems were on homes; this dropped to 30 percent in 2010, and some experts think that will continue to fall.
California may now hold the record for largest residential solar system in the world. The 150-kilowatt system is about 30 times larger than an average 5-kilowatt residential system.
The estate sits atop a hill in Los Angeles. Instead of installing the 600-panel solar power system on their roof, the owners, who choose to remain anonymous, installed the array on the south-facing downward slope of the hill. This increases the efficiency of the system. Tilted panels typically produce more power than those laid flat.
The owners showed a bit of whimsy in the installation, leaving a gap in the rows and columns of solar panels to accommodate a boulder protruding from the craggy slope.
It stands to reason that adding an asset which cuts your electricity bills–solar panels–will bump up a home’s value. Now an economic study attaches numbers to solar panels’ real-estate value.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently released an analysis that found solar panels add between 3 percent and 4 percent to the value of a home. That result is consistent with a study released in April by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which found that solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have a “sizeable effect” on home prices.
Over the years, Solar Decathlon (a competition organized by the U.S. Department of Energy) has showcased a myriad of energy efficient conceptions that has influenced and rather inspired our senses. And last year it was no different as the LOW3, a self sustaining solar powered house designed by students of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), took the top honors in the category of Architecture.
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