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Photo: S. Rantis Architects

The practice of green construction—where developers rely on environmentally friendly materials, energy-efficient appliances, and alternative sources of energy to create homes that cause less stress on their surroundings—has become a popular marketing tool for homebuilders. The reason for this is simple: Green homes appeal to a growing number of buyers, especially those who want to lower their monthly utility bills and do good at the same time. Unfortunately, many buyers who would like to purchase an environmentally friendly house too often can’t afford them. Most green-built homes are simply priced too high for the average buyer.

Tom Ryan, developer and managing partner of Green Development Partners in Asheville, NC, wants to change this. Green living should be affordable to all homebuyers, he says, and he’s prepared to take the steps to make sure it is. To help his vision of affordable green living become reality, Ryan is partnering with officials at Fletcher, NC-based Appalachian Energy to create what will be the country’s largest housing development powered mainly by onsite solar thermal energy.

“One of our goals has been to build a green development that is affordable to the majority of buyers,” says Ryan. “Traditionally, green building has been primarily reserved for the higher-end buyer. We wanted to change that.”

The development, the mixed-use Rivercane Village at Cane Creek, in Fletcher, will offer homes priced from $100,000 to $300,000—quite reasonable in this current real estate market. Green Development Partners is able to keep these prices down to this affordable level, thanks mainly to the project’s solar thermal infrastructure.

Appalachian Energy, an importer and installer of renewable energy systems, is investing more than $2.6 million to provide the solar thermal system at Rivercane. But the company will recoup this investment over the following years by selling energy units to the Rivercane homeowners association. And the solar system, which will provide enough power to Rivercane’s property owners to handle nearly 80% of their heating, cooling, and hot water needs, means that Green Development Partners will save $3 million to $4 million in costs by not having to install traditional heat pumps and furnaces throughout the development.

Green Development Partners can then pass on this savings to their future homebuyers.

“What really allows this project to be affordable is that we are breaking new ground with the solar components,” Ryan says. “We don’t have to, as a development, pass on that direct cost to the homeowners. The homeowners get 100% of the benefits of the solar system, but they don’t have to pay for that cost over the years.”

Ryan and Scott Clark, chief executive officer of Appalachian Energy, say the partnership model they have forged at Rivercane Village, as well as the solar thermal system, are already common in residential construction in European countries. In the US, though, solar thermal for cooling—in addition to solar thermal for its more common use of providing heating—has largely been reserved for commercial applications. The two men are hoping that their Rivercane project can serve as a model for other developers and energy providers, and as an impetus to more examples of affordable green housing across the country.

“I think that this project is going to be monumental in our development world and in our energy world,” says Clark. “Instead of relying so heavily on regional powerhouses on the main grids, we should be providing more of our power in a decentralized fashion. By relying so much on regional powerhouses, it can be crippling when we have outside influences that impact our energy supply. As consumers look at energy security, and then look at Rivercane, this is going to be a model that consumers will demand moving forward. From the very beginning, Tom [Ryan] and I have seen this as a country template, not just as a localized template.”

An Ambitious Project
Rivercane Village will be a massive project once built. Developers are planning 407 live/work units, residential condominiums, and townhouses at the 38-acre site that once housed an abandoned airstrip at a long-closed airport. The large project will also include up to 28,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.

Construction crews are scheduled to begin breaking ground on the mixed-use development in the summer of this year, with the first housing units rising shortly after that. Ryan says that construction on the project should wrap up in the first quarter of 2009.

The solar thermal heating and cooling system is a major component of the project. Rivercane will boast 1,600 solar panels, four adsorption chillers, and more than 1 mile of hot and cold water lines running through the development’s streets, to power the unique heating-and-cooling system.

Of course, the most intriguing facet of the project’s solar system is that the sun will not only be providing heat and hot water for residences, as is typical of solar energy systems, but cooling for air-conditioning, too.

Here’s how the solar thermal system will work: Appalachian Energy will install solar panels on rooftops throughout Rivercane Village. These panels will transfer heat to a liquid—similar to antifreeze—that runs through the panels’ coils. That energy will heat water running through a loop through the development’s streets and into its buildings. These will provide heat and hot water to residents. At the same time, the system’s four adsorption chillers will rely on some of this heat to cool water and provide air-conditioning to residences and commercial sites. This makes for a highly efficient system, where little energy goes to waste.

“What makes this monumental in the solar industry is that this is the largest residential solar heated and cooled residential project,” says Clark. “We are taking solar energy and crafting cooling through a process called adsorption chilling. That technology is actually the center of this development in its unique ability to provide the total cooling load for this development.”

Adsorption chillers are a relatively new technology in the US. The chillers are extremely efficient, relying only on water as a refrigerant. The chillers use a permanent silica gel as an adsorbent. The chillers can produce chilled water temperatures of less than 38˚F. The adsorption chillers at Rivercane will certainly provide enough power for the development. They were manufactured in Germany, and were originally designed for large commercial/industrial applications, says Clark.

Not only will the system be an effective one, it will also be a boon to future homeowners at Rivercane, he adds. The developers of Rivercane estimate that about 80% of residents’ overall bill utility bills go toward hot water, heating, and cooling. With the solar thermal system handling this percentage, the majority of homeowners’ energy costs will be fixed. This removes the stress for owners of having to deal with wildly fluctuating energy bills.

Rivercane Village, though, won’t be completely off the grid. Natural gas will back up the solar thermal system. The local utility, Progress Energy, will provide the development’s electrical needs. As revolutionary as the solar thermal system may seem, Rivercane is actually not relying on new technology, says Clark. The heating loop, chillers and solar panels that construction crews will soon install at Rivercane have already been tested by years of use in the field, he says.

“The nice thing about this development is that we are not inventing anything new, other than the cooling component,” he points out. “We can show you example upon example in European markets where developers have provided central district heating loops. Our chillers, too, have been in the field for more than 15 years in the commercial/industrial environment. We have a detailed track record operational-wise. Some of the challenge lies in educating the consumers and our partners on who this works on a smaller scale. From my standpoint, the model has already been proven on a much larger scale.”

“We are trying to reinforce in all our marketing that this is not new technology,” Ryan adds. “We are using proven systems that have been in service for decades in Europe and other places. The only thing we are doing from a technical standpoint is that we are using this as an alternate application. We are using this technology on a very conventional mixed-use multi-family type of development.”

High Demand
The solar component isn’t the only environmentally friendly aspect of Rivercane. Developers are only building on 20% of the land, leaving 20 acres free from new construction. The development also boasts an innovative stormwater design system that uses street-side planters and constructed wetlands to capture and treat runoff.

It’s little surprise that Rivercane has gone this route. The US Green Building Council estimates that by 2010 a total of 10% of homes built in the US will be green. Green building, then, is a growing market, one that already represents billions of dollars and will be even more lucrative in the future.

Ryan doesn’t doubt this trend; he’s seen it firsthand. “We have had an extraordinary amount of interest in this community, and one of the key drivers is the green dynamic,” he says. “What makes Rivercane unique is that we are achieving a landmark status with the solar technology that Appalachian Energy is bringing to the table.”

The affordable price points—brought about, in part, by the same solar thermal system—are also a draw to potential buyers, says Ryan.

“There is no shortage of environmentally friendly or green luxury condos or single-family homes,” he explains. “But there is a complete void when it comes to moderately priced green housing in our market. That is getting an awful lot of interest. And it should. There is no reason why green building should be reserved only for the high-end of the market.”

The solar thermal system not only is helping Ryan keep the cost of purchasing a home at a more reasonable level, it is also making the homes themselves more affordable places to live. The solar heating, cooling, and hot water services will now be a known quantity—for a period of up to 20 years—to residents. No longer will they have to wonder just how high their heating and cooling bills will be each month.

Because this is the first large-scale residential application of the technology, Ryan and Clark say they do not yet know how much money each month the solar thermal system will save residents. But, they say, it will be a significant amount.

“This model allows for far greater predictability and stability in residents’ energy costs,” Ryan says. “We can go out to buyers with a proposition: In a world of never-ending conventional energy cost increases, here is an opportunity for residents to have known energy costs for a period of up to 20 years. That’s been a real significant benefit that, coupled with the overall efficiency of the units themselves, is attracting a lot of interest from consumers. The predictability of monthly costs is a win all the way around.”

For Rivercane to be a success, and for its innovative thermal heating and cooling system to eventually become a more mainstream product, the housing development needs to attract one thing: residents.

So far, the developers are promoting Rivercane through a combination of traditional paid advertising and a more grassroots approach. Fortunately, news organizations intrigued by Rivercane’s status as the country’s largest solar thermal project. This means many of them have written their own news stories about the development.

And these stories have piqued the interest of several potential buyers, Ryan says.

“The unique nature of the community, its landmark nature, has meant that we are getting a lot of interest from folks,” he says. “It’s new, different. We are looking to leverage this as much as possible. The response to the small amount of traditional marketing we’ve done so far has been very strong. There is a market out there that is looking for a different place. Rivercane is giving them an option.”

This effort is helped by the fact that green building and energy-efficient homes—not to mention the lower monthly utility bills that come with them—have become a hot selling point.

“Everyone wants to do something green,” says Clark. “We don’t find too many who don’t want to do anything from an energy conservation standpoint. At the end of the day, having an energy-efficient home helps owners in their pocketbooks. We’ve been able to come together and make this a win-win proposition for everyone. We are building a community that embraces sustainable living. Solar technologies, renewable technologies, a green parkway—we have it all in one development. This will set a template for others to follow.”

“We believe this project will serve as a model for others for a lot of different reasons,” says Ryan. “One of the goals from the onset of this project was to create a formula that can be repeated in any market. We are in this process now. We are actively looking for opportunities in this market and in others to repeat this process.”

The $60-million housing community should bring several benefits to the surrounding area of Fletcher, he adds. The development is located within walking distance of the adjacent Fletcher Business Park, which had been temporarily vacated after a large manufacturer pulled out of the site.

The officials running the industrial park, though, have worked hard to bring businesses and manufacturers back to the site. These officials hope that the development of Rivercane—a development that they say will prove popular thanks in large part to the project’s innovative solar thermal system and the affordable housing prices that system is helping to bring to Rivercane—will attract even more employers to the industrial park.

“Rivercane Village will provide moderately priced housing within easy walking distance of these employers,” says Rusty Pulliam, president and chief executive officer of the business park’s ownership group, in a written statement. “And that in turn will help attract more industry to the park.”

Ryan says that Rivercane Village is targeted largely toward the mostly middle-class workers who will work at the nearby business park. The housing development’s site sits between the Fletcher Business Park and a creek side forest. Green Development Partners will build hiking trails and pavilions through the woods, place the parcel in a conservation easement, and then donate that easement to the town of Fletcher, so that it can extend its greenway.

Even though construction was not yet set to begin until later in 2008, both Clark and Ryan are looking forward to a successful development.

Rivercane has a lot to offer its future residents, the men say. Not the least among these benefits is its solar thermal cooling and heating system. What resident, after all, would prefer the always changing, seemingly always rising, monthly costs of traditional heating-and-cooling systems when they can instead look forward to stable, and lower, monthly utility bills?

“Each unit will be monitored on its energy consumption, and the energy bill for that portion will be included in the owners’ association fees,” says Clark. “We figured that about 80% of owners’ overall energy bills go to hot water, heating, and cooling. If we can fix that for the homeowners, we’ve taken care of almost 80% of their overall energy bills annually. That’s a big draw for a lot of people.”