Conway homeowners bask in power of the sun
Posted on Thursday, January 3, 2008
CONWAY — When Jim and Pamela Mosley bought their small, stucco house in Conway 1 about 4 / 2 years ago, they began a tradition: Each year they would make the home more energyefficient. Now, by summer, they expect they’ll have made enough improvements that their electricity meter will be spinning backward — enough so to get a credit on their utility bill. Today, the Mosley home, built in 1926, uses an average of 400 kilowatt hours of electricity per month, for which they pay Conway Corp. an average of about $ 20, said Jim Mosley, a solar engineer. By comparison, the average number of kilowatt hours used per month in Conway residences in 2006 was 1, 080, said Richard Arnold, Conway Corp. ’s chief executive officer.
The Mosleys’ latest improvement is a solar system added about a month ago to their 1, 300-square-foot home about a block from Hendrix College and to the small shed behind their house. The solar panels, attached to the shed, help generate electricity, which their home also uses, Jim Mosley explained Wednesday.
The home is the first in Conway and one of fewer than probably a dozen in Arkansas with the capacity to generate electricity back to the area’s power grid, according to Bill Ball, known to some as the state’s unofficial solar-power guru. Ball owns the Little Rock-based Natural Environments Inc. and, in turn, that corporation’s solar business, Stellar Sun.
The number of such homes will soon increase, though.
Ball, who helped design the Mosleys’ solar-ray system, is planning a 35-home subdivision west of Cammack Village in Little Rock where each house will be required to provide at least 50 percent of its own electricity from solar rays. The homes, ranging from 2, 200 to 4, 000 square feet, will cost in the $ 500, 000 range. Ball said he hopes construction will start this month.
The Mosleys heat their house with gas. And because their solar system has been in place such a short time — and not when the sun is at its peak — they haven’t had a chance to benefit from it yet. But come summer, “since we don’t run our air conditioner [ except in August ], we’ll be making more electricity than we’re using,” Jim Mosley said.
“Our goal is to get the house as close to what we call ‘net zero,’ so that when you add up all year long, at the end of the year, you’ve used zero energy,” he said. “And with this old house, that’s a hard trick.” Ball said he doesn’t know of any house in Arkansas already generating 100 percent of its own energy.
Mosley said energy, more than any potential monetary savings, prompted him to install the solar system. “We’ve spent $ 6, 000 [on the system ], and we’re going to be saving $ 10 or $ 20 right now,” he explained.
Actually, he spent $ 8, 000 on the system, but he qualified for a $ 2, 000 federal tax credit for installing it.
Any excess energy Mosley’s home generates will go back to Conway Corp. ’s power grid, not to batteries. (Some homes have systems that store electricity in batteries as a backup power source, rather than use meters with the capacity to spin backward. )
Ball said homeowners should make their houses energy-efficient before they add a solar system. Depending on the amount of electricity a home uses, he said, a system can cost as much as $ 40, 000 or more.
The Mosleys, for example, improved their aging home’s efficiency considerably.
One year they added insulation. They also replaced the house’s water heater with a “tankless” one, which burns only when water is turned on and saves “an enormous amount” of energy, Mosley said.
Another year they put a metal roof above the house’s more traditional roof, which was starting to leak and needed replacing. At the very top of the metal roof, they placed a vented ridge cap so that anything below never would get too hot. “As a result, our house inside is always 10 degrees cooler than it is outside,” Mosley said.
The Mosleys keep their house’s temperature at 68 degrees in the winter and 78 in the summer. They keep all of their appliances connected to power strips. Otherwise, when such items as a television set are plugged in but not in use, they still can consume up to 50 percent of the electricity they would use when they’re turned on, Mosley said. And they do one other thing that doesn’t cost a dime except for time: They use an old-fashioned, outdoor clothesline and rely on their dryer only when necessary — on rainy days, for instance.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
