What’s the BIG Deal? Small Home vs. Big Home Solar Power

 
Photo Credit: AMD

Whether you live in a 300-square-foot yurt or a sprawling mansion, home solar power has invaluable benefits to offer. Yet logistically, there are some very keen differences for you, your utility bill, your community and country. In fact, home solar power and rising energy costs are seriously challenging the McMansion era notion that “bigger is better.”

In a way, home solar power turns the economies of scale (i.e. the home on the biggest scale gets the biggest deal) on its head. The reasons will become apparent as we delve into the small home versus BIG home solar power.

Why BIGGER is NOT Better

• Big homes use more power - More electricity for lighting and appliances and if applicable, more gas for heating. Yes, owners of big homes can take the same steps as anyone else to conserve energy – they just have to work a bit harder.
• Bigger spaces= bigger heating and cooling costs - A bigger room simply requires more energy to warm and maintain that warmth. Bigger homes also typically have more dead spaces, or areas where air gets trapped, thus making them harder to heat or cool adequately. This promotes poor indoor air quality. The most obvious example is a large attic with poor ventilation. An energy efficient home is designed so that air will flow efficiently through it, from top to bottom. Even an efficient large home will expend more energy moving air than similarly efficient smaller homes.
• More solar panels for the same energy savings - Big homes do tend to have more roof space for the installation of larger home solar power systems. However, bigger homes need more panels to create the same ratio of energy-saved-versus-energy-used with fewer panels. The bottom line? Big homes require a bigger, more expensive solar power system to satisfy big energy demands.

Small Home Solar Power Gets the BIG Deal

• Small doesn’t equal uncomfortable - Building smaller doesn’t mean the home will feel cramped or uncomfortable. Small home design is all about efficient use of space. Over years of remodeling, designers, builders and homeowners have gotten really good at this. Efficient use of space inherently includes more efficient heating and cooling, which beget more efficient use of the valuable (because it’s free!) power produced by a small home solar system.
• Better use of passive solar power - Small homes typically have open floor plans to provide a sense of largeness. Put these open spaces on the south side of the home with lots of south-facing windows and thermal flooring, and the home itself becomes the solar power system. This further lessens the load on the system, increasing its effect and saving money all around.
• Smaller home= smaller footprint - In addition to cutting energy costs indoors, small home building also saves land and yard space and allows for more greenery on the property. This means that your landscape eats more carbon and does its small part to clean up local air supply, retain more storm water and curb climate change. Not to mention provide more room for the kids to play.
• Less grid energy required – The sun only shines during the day. At night, grid-tie solar homes must draw energy from the regional electric grid. Because smaller homes use less energy, they’re a smaller burden on the local grid at night and are less likely to require grid energy during the day.

This is not meant to discourage owners of big homes from adopting a home solar power system. The benefits of solar power are universal, regardless of home size. But if you’re adding on or building new, it may be wise to reevaluate how much you want to build out. Smaller homes simply require less energy and tend to be more efficient with the energy they do consume. That makes life easier on the home solar power system.

Upward Sensibilities

There are ways to get all the space you want in an efficient manner. The inefficient and ostentatious McMansions typically sprawl out across the landscape like a giant, flat footprint on the Earth. The new eco-friendlier building designs tend to build up rather than out. Instead of occupying 2,000 square feet of space across a home site, the design adds one or more stories. This is beneficial for a number of reasons, two of which are more room for green spaces and more efficient air flow.

Warm air flows upward a lot easier than it flows outward. A radiant floor heating system in an open, tightly sealed, multilevel house can provide a good deal of the heating needs with very little (if any) grid power. Building up has become the model of green building in urban areas where space is already limited – and it works well.

Heating, cooling and water heating are the biggest energy consumers in the modern home. A small, well-designed home can cut these costs drastically before ever requiring the HVAC system. A small and efficient home commands a small and effective home solar power system.

Julia’s Mansion Photo Credit: The Sun

Posted on October 2nd in Solar Information by Dan.