Appeal of 'green' houses grows with financial incentives

Ballard builder Martha Rose is wiring the houses she builds so that electricity-generating solar panels can be installed easily whenever the homeowner decides to invest.

Rose did it on the four-story, mixed-use Ballard structure she built to work and live in. The system on her roof cost $17,000, and with its ability to produce 1.5 kilowatts of electricity, it figures to provide 30 percent of the household's electrical needs over the next 30 to 50 years.


		Grant M. Haller / P-I
	The sun reflects off a 3.6-watt Crystalline Silicon Solar Cell held by Martha Rose, president of Martha Rose Construction Inc. Rose, whose company constructed the building behind her at 300 N. 133rd St. in Seattle, had five solar panels with about 250 of these cells installed on the roof.

"People always ask 'What's the payback?' " she said. "but that's the wrong question. This was a capital improvement."

Rose, 52, builds "green," an energy-conservation, healthy-living concept slowly invading the marketing lingo of established developers but long espoused by builders like herself.

"We even try to orient our buildings with south-sloping roofs so when it comes time for people to invest in solar, they'll be ready to go," she said."

That time appears to be approaching, if slowly, with passage by the Legislature last session of two bills establishing financial incentives for individuals as well as utilities and solar-equipment manufacturers.

Here's how it's supposed to work:

For the first time in this state, individuals will be paid by their local utility 15 cents per kilowatt hour (up to $2,000 a year) to produce electricity, whether they do the job with miniwind generators, photovoltaic solar panels or gas-producing anaerobic digesters of garbage or manure.

With today's rates as a guide, that's a decided plus no matter where you draw your power. Publicly owned Seattle City Light, for example, now charges 4.2 cents per kilowatt hour for up to 10 kilowatt hours, then boosts the rate to 8.53 cents.

Investor-owned Puget Sound Energy charges 6.8 cents for the first 600 kilowatt hours and 8.5 cents for the next 800.

Thus under either utility, customers who generate their own electricity could see their investment really pay off.

The program does not mandate participation by power companies, but should they choose to sign up, they will get a tax break, and so will companies that manufacture solar equipment.

City Light spokesman Bob Royer said his organization is hot for the program.

Puget Sound Energy did not respond, but already has been offering one-time incentives to its customers who install photovoltaic equipment.

Already on the books in this state is a law forgiving the sales tax on solar equipment, and a law that allows "net metering," which requires that electricity generated on the roof slow or spin the electric meter backward, cutting the draw from the utility's grid and reducing the overall electric bill.

The newest laws took effect July 1, but remain somewhere in a political limbo created by an amendment requiring the state, the power companies and the manufacturers to agree on equipment standards before anyone drops the start flag.

Pamela Burton of Seattle, a spokeswoman for the fledgling solar-application industry, calls the amendment a "poison pill."

But its author, Rep. Jeff Morris, a Democrat who represents northwest Washington, said that all the shouting should be over by early next year.

The model he has in mind is a California law that allows a Costco to sell off-the-shelf solar packages that all power companies can accept.

By comparison in this state, Morris said, "there are 63 different utilities, each with its own standard, which does not help the consumer in the long run."

The challenge now is getting the state's smaller public-utility districts into this solar coalition of the willing.

"And a lot of these guys are from the old school and have fought these ideas actively for years," Morris said.

None of this internecine bickering is going to spoil the fun for George Hom, however. The 72-year-old former professor of psychology at The Evergreen State College has been in the home-building business for more than two decades and wants to make a lasting impression with a project now in the works for eastern Thurston County.

Hom, who honed his people skills as the first director of Seattle's Asian Counseling and Referral Service in the International District, insists that buyers -- as well as the home-building industry -- start getting their priorities straight when it comes to luxuries versus needs.

He wants to prove that today's developer can build a solar-equipped, two-bedroom, two-bath, two-car-garage home in the affordable $250,000 range and has a 52-unit retirement community under way on the outskirts of Yelm to do just that.

"At least that's my objective," Hom said. "Will I include granite countertops? Of course not. Nobody needs granite countertops."

But his roofs will include photovoltaic electricity-generating panels as well as the heat-collecting solar panels that produce hot water. In addition, each home will be equipped with geothermal heat pumps that squeeze comfortable interior temperatures out of the Earth's constant 52 degrees. And they will be built with insulated concrete blocks known as Rastra, "which will cost a lot less than ordinary building materials," Hom said.