Real Estate: Roseville Renewables

Community Comments

By Sukhjit Purewal

Roseville is on the front line of tomorrow’s smart-energy, environmentally friendly communities. The city is banking on rate-payer dollars to encourage builders to deliver green homes. Already home to one solar-powered, ultra-energy-efficient subdivision, Premier Oaks, now the city is ready to welcome in the first batch of another 635 of these houses by Lennar — slated to be the largest such project in the nation.
    As with the Premier Homes project Roseville Electric is paying about half of the cost of equipping the Lennar homes with solar energy and energy-efficient appliances at a pricetag of $8,500, a whopping figure when compared to what other utilities offer. The idea is to equip the homes with solar panels to generate some of their operating electricity, while hermetically sealing the homes against leaks and loss of heat and equipping them with very advanced low-energy-consumption heating and air conditioning systems and appliances.
So how can Roseville Electric offer better incentives than other utilities? PG&E and all utility companies are required by the California Public Utilities Commission to pay builders $2.60 for every watt of solar energy installed under the Emerging Renewables Program. Publicly held utilities (with their own shareholders) set their own rebates at any level above that based on their business plans, which is why Roseville Electric can give back $4 to existing home owners and home builders for every solar watt installed, says Vonette McCauley, public relations manager with Roseville Electric. Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) offers a $2.80 rebate.
    Claudia Chandler, a spokeswoman with the California Energy Commission, says when it first began eight years ago, the Emerging Renewables Program also required investor-owned utility companies to give a $4 rebate for every solar watt installed by consumers. But the figure has been scaled back now that fewer incentives are needed to get developers to go solar, she says.
    McCauley says the city of Roseville hopes the higher rebate will serve as an incentive to convince more people to make the conversion to solar.
    With thousands of new homes planned in Roseville, the city hopes to push more such private-public partnerships as a way of building environmentally friendly communities.
    Roseville Electric reports that each Premier Oaks unit produces 3,500 kWh annually, or about 10 kWh of solar energy daily.
    And while an average Roseville home, (including apartments and condominiums) consumes 790 kWh/month, or 26 kWh/daily, a Premier Oaks home consumes 426 kWh/month of electricity, or 14.2 kWh daily. A unit without solar panels will pay a monthly average of almost $79 for electrical use, or $2.62 daily, excluding Roseville Electric’s basic monthly service charge of $6.50. A Premier Oaks home averages $42 for electrical use each month, or $1.41 each day, according to figures provided by Roseville Electric.
    Roseville Electric also benefits. Jeff Panasiti, president of Lennar Homes, Sacramento, says the energy produced by these solar homes will offset Roseville Electric’s need to build new energy plants to serve more customers.
    “When our customers are energy efficient that reduces our needs,” Roseville Electric’s McCauley says. “That’s good for all.”
    The Lennar collection is projected to annually avoid 2.3 million pounds of natural gas emissions, McCauley says.
    Barry Cinnamon, president of Akeena Solar in Los Gatos and president of California Solar Energy Industries Association, says these partnerships benefit everyone because they help to lower the cost of solar power.
As with the Toyota Prius, Cinnamon predicts that in four years homebuyers are going to be looking at energy-efficient homes once the concept becomes ingrained in the culture. The continuing trends of higher prices for electricity and falling prices for solar energy will help to spur the change, he says. 
    Let the sun shine in.

Read the rest of Prosper's special real estate package, including:

After the Boom, The Green Gap, Northstar Rising and Ski In, Buy In

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