California is a perfect place for solar roofs.

By DeWitt Smith

You know solar is coming into its own when California developers start building homes with solar roofs. And we’re not talking about a few here and there. We mean hundreds of homes.

In northern California, two developers—Christopherson Homes and Hugh Futrell—have taken a giant leap ahead of the curve in building, promoting, and selling communities that are energy efficient. Green building is fueling the rise in new homes with solar roofs, and the solar panels are not just for hot-water systems; they’re used to provide electricity.

Amy Christopherson Bolten, the daughter of Keith and Brenda Christopherson who founded the business in Santa Rosa, CA, says she accidentally stumbled upon the concept of green building four years ago. But, as Freud says, there are no accidents. And if that’s the case, then chalk it up to good timing and being in step with the marketplace.

“I’m the community-relations person in the company, and it’s my job to see what’s coming down the pike,” says the 34-year-old developer, the second generation of a family business. “Developers don’t usually talk to environmentalists. But I was reading a lot of different journals back then, and I saw that in a few years, green building was more than a concept.”

Understand that point made her realize that developers were going to have to change the way they build and that she wanted to be prepared when the market changed—“Because it always does,” says Bolten.

“Here in North Bay, in Sonoma County, where we’re located, we thought it was a real market advantage,” she says. “What we’ve found is that the market wants green building and has a conservation mentality. The market is really demanding it in the Sacramento, where there’s a great deal of emphasis on energy efficiency.”

Sacramento is the capital of California, and in January 2007 the California Legislature enacted what is considered among the most progressive laws about energy conservation and consumption.

Bolten says the company debated and discussed for a couple of years the pros and cons of doing a solar project. The focus, of course, was building houses that could reduce energy costs.

“We’d been on the lookout by the time we decided to do the Wisteria community here in North Bay. By the time we got to Wisteria, there were a couple of other solar communities, and they were out-selling all the others,” she says. “We had been looking for proof, and we saw it in our competitors. Solar was our last frontier.”

With the soaring electrical costs and homeowners starting to demand houses with efficient energy, the Christophersons made the push to convert Wisteria to solar, despite the cost and time of replacing the old roofs.

“I’ve been on this project for two years, and during that time we’ve had customers come back and express interest once they heard the homes were solar,” Christopherson says. “It’s made a real difference in response and moving sales.”

Switching Houses in Midstream
In June 2006, when Wisteria first opened, it wasn’t a solar project. So switching was a bit like changing horses in midstream, not an easy decision and not an easy task.

“We were about a third of the way through the project, and that’s when we made a big commitment to being greener,” says Bolten.

The Wisteria homes are large—up to 4,800 square feet—and it costs a lot to heat and cool them.

“But it was such a good idea that we did it, that now we’re offering solar as an amenity in all our homes.”

The cost of buying a house at Wisteria has stayed the same despite the changeover. Bolten says the price of a three bedroom house with a den goes for $575,000. And the largest house, with 4,800 square feet, costs $700,500.

The development is in Rocklin, just east of Sacramento, and 20 of the 60 houses are under construction for the new solar roofs.

And that’s where Aaron Nitzkin comes into the scene. Nitzkin is vice president of Old County Roofing (OCR), northern California’s largest roofing company. OCR has taken on the job of installing the solar roofs at Wisteria.

“OCR began doing solar in 2001,” says Nitzkin. “And our real efforts to drive mainstream adoption of solar began earlier this year when we launched our new division, OCR solar solutions. This is the first time that a roofing contractor of our size for residential homes has done turnkey solar.”

This project has considerably expanded OCR’s work. It’s not just laying down the PV panels on the homes. The company is now involved doing rebates, working with the utility companies and working with electricians. OCR is a solar contractor, and it trains its employees at BP Solar, in Frederick, MD.

“We sold the system to the Christophersons and helped them figure out where they would go with this,” Nitzkin says. “The Christophersons jumped right in and became very committed to this.”

This is not the first solar project for OCR, which has built hundreds of homes with solar roofs. Founded in 1967, the company has been, on average, installing about 10,000 roofs a year. And OCR has been doing solar work since 2001 since the owner felt that solar was becoming more mainstream. Over the past six years, though, the company was working on a smaller scale because solar is still a new business.

“Obviously, it’s still a little unusual for a roofer to get into the solar business. We have done subdivisions, and the market is just taking off,” Nitzkin says.

Of course it helps to have the state in partnership, so to speak. The California Solar Initiative (CSI) is a 10-year subsidy program that began in January 2007. It’s an incentive program and offers rebates to homebuilders.

The California Initiative
Someone who was absolutely instrumental in the CSI is California Energy Commissioner Jackalyne Pfannenstiel.

Appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Energy Commission in 2004, she was named to the chairman’s post in 2006. Ever since the start of her tenure, Pfannenstiel has been on a mission to cut energy and boost solar projects all through the Golden State. And she’s got her work cut out for her, as California has the highest energy costs in the Union and the highest state population: 33.8 million.

No novice to the field of energy, Pfannenstiel arrived from Connecticut with a master’s degree in economics. And she’s been building on that ever since, primarily with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the California utility company from 1980 to 2001.

“The was the heart of my career,” Pfannenstiel says from her Sacramento office. “I was doing primarily strategic planning. Some of it was thinking about additional resource needed and how much that would cost—sources such as hydroelectric or gas-fueled power plants or some other power plant. I had a lot of questions about where wires would be needed to meet load growth and how the population was growing and PG&E would invest.”

This is not light thinking, and it goes to the heart of investment strategy and planning that utility companies have to be prepared for. As Pfannenstiel explains, because the utility business is regulated, its profitability depends on the returns of its investment earnings.

“My job was trying to look ahead and decided where the investments were needed,” she says. “I was at PG&E during the energy crisis and working with state regulators trying to deliver service to customers. It used to be that utilities had their own power plants and wires to homes. That was a vertically integrated monopoly. Now utilities buy a lot of power from other power plant owners. They don’t control the use of transmission wires. So there has been enormous change in the institution.”

Maneuvering the giant utility’s way through the energy crisis taught her about more than just energy conservation and efficiency.

It taught her the value of crisis management and to learn about switching strategy.

As a result of working with the Public Utility Commission, she was able to help PG&E restructure so that the company was no longer tied to energy use. Profit was independent of customer use and PG&E could help customers reduce their energy consumption.

“That was an enormous sea change and a shift in vision,” she says. “It was the same principal that allowed incentive dollars for customers to buy energy-efficient appliances. And it led me to think about giving customers breaks for using energy at different times of the day and away from peak time. That was strategic planning: What makes sense of the economy and society.”

California is a leader in the use of photovoltaics to provide solar energy for electricity.

Renewable Energy?
Renewable energy is a term that’s thrown around a lot these days. But what does it mean?

“It’s energy that comes from natural resources, and it’s either directly or indirectly produced to use in the home,” Pfannenstiel explains. “It is solar, hydro, wind, geothermal, like a hot spring in ground, or biomass, like using wood chips. California is fortunate because it has all those things.”

With California’s continuing rapid growth, particularly in the warmer areas, solar energy is no longer a luxury for residential building. It’s a necessity. And that’s what Pfannenstiel is promoting—a wide-spread use of solar. It’s a program the California Energy Commission is solidly behind: solar homes partnership.

“Let’s talk about solar, and I’d like to focus on solar homes,” she says. “New housing units are about 200,000 a year, and growing enormously fast in the south and central valley. So my concern is that all the new homes being built, which we need, are putting additional strains on our energy use.”

Her idea is to have the new homes be energy efficient and to go beyond the requirements. She’d like to see efficiency coupled with solar use.

“We’re providing the electricity they need for their air-conditioners. Let’s give them a better built home, with better windows and insulation. And let’s find the cheapest way to provide solar. From society’s standpoint, it’s absolutely a win-win situation. You have an overall efficient home, and you have the solar providing power at the peak hours,” she says.

Part of her effort is to educate builders. Even though many of them know about solar, not all of them understand the value of building solar roofs.

“We’ve been working with the builders and energy consultants who work with the building industry. The idea is to work with the builders even in a down housing market. When a prospective homebuyer doesn’t ask about solar but wants fancy countertops and fancy bathrooms, we need builders to talk about solar panels.”

She understands how many people may be a little frightened about the new technology.

“I believe there has to be a fundamental change. I would like it to be that every new home would not have central air conditioning without solar. We have to set up an incentive system,” she says with a passion to her tone.

And the woman with the master’s in economics understands the marketplace.

“Another reason to look at the homebuilders is that 80% to 90% of the houses are built by production,” she says. “That has the advantage of a big economy payoff. The builders need to build homes that the customers want. So the concept is there; it’s just [a matter of] getting it started. Pair energy efficiency with solar.”

Another Pioneer
Hugh Futrell is a California developer who has been in business since 1983, when he established his own company, the Hugh Futrell Corp., based in Santa Rosa. After 25 years, he’s got a lot of experience under his belt.

“We’ve done commercial development as well as urban mixed-use projects,” says the 55-year-old Futrell. “We’ve also done office and retail buildings. Most of our work is in Sonoma County. And part of green building is redeveloping sites that are in blighted areas. We’ve always been committed to urban development.”

He says he was attracted to using solar once he understood that it could be financially profitable and that he could create a marketing niche.

“We made the decision on PVs [photovoltaics] last year,” he said. “I would say relatively few designers work with PV systems because they’re relatively new. In the North Bay, PVs are very uncommon.”

Futrell’s current project, the North Village in Santa Rosa, is the largest PV project in the area, he says.

“In this case, we used a firm that had already done significant work for national companies. It’s one thing to put in a PV system. It’s another to put them in right,” he says. “We like to think that our company is pretty cutting-edge, so we have a company culture about the positive value of PV systems with regard to global warming,” Futrell says. “We’re certainly a business, but this is a business judgment as well.”

Comprising 43 single-family homes, the North Village project is an ambitious one. With starting prices of $490,000 and all solar-powered, the homes are being used as a selling point to save money on utilities.

The PVs are being installed by SunPower, which also manufactures the cells.

“Just the first 27 buildings have been constructed in the first phase. There are another 80 to be built,” says Stan Paul, marketing director for Futrell.

Even though Futrell is taking a calculated risk in this venture, the state still makes buying one of these houses a very sweet deal, starting with a state tax credit for the buyer. Next is the savings of anywhere from 50% to 75% on the electric bill, which can be sizable for a four-bedroom house. Over the course of a year, that savings can run into the hundreds of dollars, says Paul.

“And then, lenders provide buyers with money at the close of the loan if the buyer is using a PV system,” Paul adds.

But there’s a time element. Even with the current pricing with the state rebates, it takes a lot to incorporate PVs into these projects. Over the long term there still have to be cost reductions in order for PVs to be used.

Bill Kelly is the general manager of SunPower’s new homes division.

“We’re providing solar electric systems to production home builders, and our developments are often subdivisions of 25 homes or more. We both manufacture the systems and provide installation,” says Kelly.

“Our technology is a good example of how builders are able to deliver high quality,” he says. “Our product is solar electric. Many consumers mistake solar to mean ‘hot water.’ The solar we install provides electricity to the home.”

Founded in 1985, SunPower has been building a client base, both residential and commercial. One of its big projects was the solar roof for Microsoft at its Silicon Valley campus.

“And we’re providing PVs for about 30 stores in California, such as Macy’s. And we use the same solar electric system that we install in homes,” Kelly says.

From the company’s point of view, a big plus is that the PVs are made in the Philippines rather than in China, which has gotten a lot of negative attention about the issue of product safety.

According to Kelly, California is the leader in the use of PVs to provide solar energy for electricity.

“There’s been support of public policy in California. Gov. Schwarzenegger and the state legislature have implemented what’s known as SB 1, which supports the solar industry,” says Kelly. “I would characterize it as a leading development to building 100% solar power for each house that has a solar electric system.”

Of course, this legislative support benefits companies like Hugh Futrell, Christopherson Homes, Old Country Roofing, and SunPower. And this is exactly what Pfannensteil wants to happen—let the builders build, and the buyers will come.

“What we’re saying is that builders are selling these homes more quickly than nonsolar homes. It’s really growing. Our company has over 40 solar communities in California right now,” Kelly says.

“What we’re seeing is that home buyers are attracted to the low electric bills. Compared with the air-conditioning bills at this time of year, when we have over-100-degree temperatures, the low electric bills makes these homes more valuable over time.”

Writer DeWitt Smith lives in Ojai, CA.

DE - November/December 2007