BOB KENYON
Special to Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — I have a contract to buy a house near the airport in Hutch. My previous plan was to build a fully electric Net Zero house in The Highlands, KS. What is a Net Zero house you ask - it’s a house which produces as much electricity as it consumes. Hence, the net is zero. The plan was to build a super efficient house with massive insulation and a 15 kw solar system from King Solar in Yoder, KS (www.kingsolar.net). The stovetop would be induction, all light bulbs LED, every appliance Energy Star certified. We’d have 17” of insulation in the attic for an R value of 50. Windows would be super high quality, possibly triple pane. Perhaps geothermal heating/cooling. We planned to install a couple Tesla Powerwall batteries in the garage to hold power for nighttime and attempt to avoid ever pulling from the grid. The goal was two-fold: if we never had to pay for heating, cooling, charging our Lightning truck or any electrical needs, the retirement budget would be more comfortable. Secondly, we’re trying to avoid putting any carbon in the air. If you don’t pull electricity from the grid, you don’t cause the power company to burn more coal.
Life sometimes throws a curve at you and when we got down to hard numbers with the builder, the cost was just too high. The realtor who sold us the lot in The Highlands, found us a house in Hutch with solar, which was under budget so we pivoted. Another reason to change plans was the difference in how the two electric companies involved deal with solar. Net metering pretty much means the electric meter dial spins in both directions. If on a sunny mild Fall day you produce 60 kWh and consume 30 kWh, you bank the extra 30 kWh for another day. The house we were going to build was going to have a 15 kw solar system and the house we’re buying has a 10.5 kw system. A 10 kw solar system will produce 10 kWh every hour the sun is shining. A day with 6 hours of sun will produce 60 kWh. A typical house will consume 35 kWh per day so with at least 3.5 hours of sun per day, you’re good to go - zero power bills. Charging our Lightning truck can consume as much as 100 kWh so that’s another issue. Evergy serves Hutch and offers net metering which is preferable in our case.
The Highlands is served by Ark Valley Co-op for electricity. They do not offer net metering but rather use parallel metering if you have solar. That means there are two readings on the meter - one for electricity coming in and one for electricity going out.
The kicker is that you pay retail for what you use and are compensated for what you return at wholesale * 1.5. Because Ark Valley is not-for-profit, they are immune from the law that requires power companies to offer net metering. That was another factor in deciding not to build in The Highlands. We were going to buy expensive batteries in The Highlands to avoid pulling from the grid at night. With Evergy, the grid essentially serves as your battery, you put the excess in the grid and pull it out at a later time and use your credit.
A few notes about net metering. In Maryland, I had friends with solar who would receive a check every April first if they produced more electricity than they consumed for the year - sounds reasonable. Early in my research I found that in Kansas, any credit is zeroed out April 1 - just gone. But wait - it gets worse. It is now the policy that any new solar system installed can bank any extra day to day, however it gets zeroed out at the end of every month. If I produce more zucchini than I consume in a month and someone just takes away the excess, that seems like theft to me. I digress. Fortunately a law was just passed that grandfathers me into the rollover month to month policy because the system was installed many years ago. I’ll still lose any excess April 1. April fools indeed.
I had the house appraised before making an offer. We asked the appraiser if the solar was considered in the valuation of the house. She indicated she had very little data but in general she did not add value to the house due to the solar. Some people might want to avoid it so it could be considered a negative value. I consider it a huge asset given that it would probably cost me around $40,000 to add this system. I’m getting a “free” system and no electric bill over $14.25. Seems like a winner to me.
The sellers shared with me their Evergy bill which shows that nearly 3,000 kWh have been banked. The minimum cost to be connected to Evergy is $14.25/month and that’s all they ever pay. The minimum monthly fee for Ark Valley is $50/month.
They used 268 kWh and produced 878 kWh so they added 610 kWh to their total of 2,954 kWh banked.
So back to the original question: Am I about to buy a Net Zero house? Well, according to the definition of producing more than you consume, yes, this presently is a Net Zero house.
However, it is not fully electric and the sellers didn’t have an EV charging in the garage. If our goal is to have zero carbon footprint, we need to consider the natural gas furnace and water heater. If I flip them both to electric, will it still be Net Zero? Only time will tell.
Comments? Questions? Drop me a line.
Bob recently retired as a professor of Computer Science at Loyola University Maryland.
Carla retired from Sandy Springs Friends School in Maryland where she was a teacher of upper level Mathematics including AP Calculus. She previously taught AP Statistics at Wichita Collegiate School in Wichita. They have family in Kansas City, Dallas, Western Arkansas and Wichita. They now live in Hutch.