In this Florida community you don’t pay for electricity

An innovative development near Tampa eliminates electric bills by being completely energy self-sufficient. (EuropaPress)

In this Florida urbanization, no one pays the electric bill.

It’s not because of subsidies, but by design: All 86 homes built or planned in Hunters Point, a development an hour south of Tampa, have 14 solar panels and a 12-kilowatt-hour home battery in the utility room.

Every afternoon, the solar panels on William and Sueann Fulford’s three-story home produce double the energy they consume. They use some of the extra electricity to charge the battery, which powers their home at night, and sell the rest to the grid. In their previous home in Virginia Beach, the couple paid electric bills of up to $600 a month.

“We still haven’t received any invoices,” says William, a 76-year-old retired contractor who spent decades building custom homes before moving to Florida. “If I build another house again, it will have solar energy. “It makes a big difference.”

Hunters Point is the first development in the world to achieve LEED Zero Energy certification, according to the U.S. Green Building Council, meaning the entire community produces more electricity than it consumes. This style of construction offers a model for sustainable building in an era of climate change, according to Avery McEvoy, who researches carbon-free electricity at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy think tank.

The Hunters Point community sets an environmental precedent with energy production exceeding its consumption. (Infobae illustrative image)

“When you build a house or a community, you invest in your generation, but also in future generations,” he said. “The more we plan for the future in an integrated and sustainable way, the more resilient our communities will be.”

In addition to reducing planet-warming carbon emissions, solar panels and batteries on Hunters Point homes reduce the chance of losing power during a storm. When Hurricane Ian hit Southwest Florida in 2022, leaving millions without power, including homeowners across the street from Hunters Point, the Fulfords’ lights stayed on.

“I feel very safe here,” says William. “We’ve been through a hurricane here before… and this neighborhood didn’t lose power, so it didn’t affect us.”

Resilience is important to this coastal neighborhood because Hunters Point is located on a low-lying, canal-lined peninsula that juts into Sarasota Bay. It is protected from the storm-prone Gulf of Mexico by a narrow barrier island less than 305 meters wide at its closest point.

Storm-tested solar power systems position Hunters Point as a benchmark for resilience and sustainability. (Infobae illustrative image)

Pearl Homes, the Florida developer behind the project, raised Hunters Point streets five feet above existing ground level and created a low-lying central park that allows water to drain from the street after flooding. Each of the houses is built above a garage on the first floor, so that all rooms are at least five meters above sea level. The walls are designed to withstand winds of 241 kilometers per hour.

But Marshall Gobuty, founder of Pearl Homes, says a solar panel and battery are just as important as elevated roads and sturdy walls in ensuring people can return home after a major hurricane. “If you can get home, great. If your house is still standing, even better,” he says. “But if you don’t have electricity, you can’t stay in your house.”

In addition to keeping the lights on during hurricanes, communities like Hunters Point can also make the power grid more resilient for their neighbors.

Electric companies can pay homeowners to use some of their home battery capacity to balance the grid. When there is a lot of energy on the grid and electricity demand is low, the power company charges the batteries of participating homeowners. Then, when electricity demand peaks, the company can draw energy from the batteries and send it back to the grid to meet demand.

Hunters Point residents can contribute to the electric grid, facilitating efficient energy use in the city. (REUTERS/Louisa Off)

This concept is called a virtual power plant, and there are more than 500 such projects in the United States and Canada, according to a February 2023 report from energy and resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Virtual power plants can help utilities meet peak demand without resorting to fossil fuel-powered thermal power plants.

“With a virtual power plant, you help the community and the local grid,” says McEvoy. “It’s another type of resilience. You can provide these services to your local system, charge for them, and keep the network online. “When we finish our last house in 2025, the goal will be to become a virtual power plant,” Gobuty says.

A spokesperson for Florida Power and Light declined to say whether the company is in talks with Hunters Point about the idea, but said it would face hurdles from the Florida Public Service Commission, which regulates large utilities in the state .

Asked about this, Cindy Muir, who heads the Commission’s Office of Consumer Assistance and Outreach, said in an email: “We are not familiar with the term ‘virtual power plant’; and therefore we have no standards that define that term.”

Hunters Point’s rugged design is critical in Florida’s Lower Peninsula, offering protection from storms. (Getty Images)

Before Pearl Homes began work on Hunters Point in June 2022, it built one of the world’s first LEED Zero Energy homes, inside a warehouse 11 miles away in Palmetto, Florida.

The two-story home — the model of homes now for sale in Hunters Point for between $1.35 million and $1.8 million — was equipped with an air conditioning system, appliances, two televisions, a home battery and a set of solar panels (installed on the roof of the warehouse, where they could capture the sun). For 18 months, Pearl Homes used appliances like a normal homeowner and collected data on how much electricity it consumed and how much its solar panels produced.

“There was one person whose full-time job was to manage devices,” Gobuty explains. “We took a shower. We turned on the stove every day. “We also had a Peloton bike.”

In the 18 months since developers demonstrated that the model home produced more energy than it consumed, they found that the 22 homeowners who moved there actually used 25 percent less energy than expected, and that their Solar panels produce 35% more energy than expected.

Pearl Homes homes feature efficient appliances, 6 inches of foam insulation in the walls and double-glazed windows. (Archive)

To make the homes work so well, Pearl Homes equipped them with efficient appliances, six inches of foam insulation in the walls and double-glazed windows. The developer spent $88,000 on solar panels and efficiency improvements for each home. Homeowners can claim 35% of the federal tax credits (about $30,000) when they file their tax return the first year after moving.

Gobuty hopes a national builder will copy his company’s design, which could transform the way Americans live across the country. “There’s someone out there who will,” he said.

(c) 2024, The Washington Post

2024-01-07 23:32:00
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