High and Tight: At Vantage of Palo Alto, extended sidewalls conceal solar panels to maintain the project’s contemporary appeal.
Photo Credit: Warmington Homes
When Costa Mesa, Calif.–based Warmington Homes purchased a pre-approved parcel for Vantage of Palo Alto, a 76-unit infill townhouse project, it came with a contingency that each unit be designed and prewired for photovoltaics (PV) so that the technology could be offered as an option to home buyers.
Rather than fight the edict, the builder embraced it—to the point of making PV a standard feature as part of a comprehensive green building program for the project.
That decision proved to be highly marketable and more cost-efficient than the alternative. “If we’d offered PV as an option, we’d have to retrofit the units for buyers that took it,” says Norman Ho, director of purchasing. The builder would have also had to carry the up-front costs of installing the rooftop racking systems and PV panels and prewiring every unit with no guarantee that an optional system would be fully leveraged. “As a standard feature, we worked it into our production flow and budget,” and thus amortized the costs across all unit sales.
A $500,000 rebate from the city-owned electric utility helped ease the expense, but making PV standard also enabled Warmington to earn a faster return on its investment with a steady sales pace at Vantage. Opened in May 2007, with prices starting in the $800s, the project, designed by Irvine, Calif.—based KTGY Group, averaged five sales a week for a year, including a pair of price increases during that time, while other projects offered deep discounts and other incentives to spark sales in a declining market.
Each unit at Vantage features a 2kW PV system that offsets 60 percent to 80 percent of the owner’s electric bill.
Optimum Orientation: Racking systems allowed the PV panels to be placed in ideal orientation to the sun to soak up and convert as much solar energy as possible and offset the power grid.
Photo Credit: Warmington Homes
The energy savings attributed to the PV system, though, is due in large part to the builder’s commitment to comprehensive green building practices. Warmington specified upgraded levels of insulation, building tightness, and high-performance windows to create efficient shells; the builder also added water-saving features to further reduce its eco-footprint and create a competitive edge.
Because few other projects in Palo Alto incorporate such measures—much less PV—into their projects, the builder’s sales staff had to educate buyers about the nuances of living in a green-built house.
That education process, says Debi Garlick, sales manager for Vantage, begins at the sales table and extends through occupancy. “Buyers need to have the proper expectations about what these features mean to their lifestyle,” she says. “Occasionally, they need to adjust to how things work and what high performance is once they move in.”