CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — Not every house is built equal, but some do balance out to zero. That is not to say the new Net Zero Energy Home in the Midway Park neighborhood aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune is a featherweight.
Far from falling into the ultra lightweight division, the new home stands around twice the size of the old housing in Midway Park and is significantly more efficient. If anything, the house is a heavy hitter when it comes to the ever increasing demands for energy efficiency.
“Everything we do is really sustainable,” said Matt Lynn, deputy project director with Atlantic Marine Corps Communities and a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design accredited professional. “We’re trying to do what’s right for the environment, but it also saves us money on our electricity in the long term, which will allow us to put more into upgrading the homes for the military families and continue to upgrade their quality of life. It’s what it’s really all about.”
The new home leaves quite a footprint in the local neighborhood in that it actually produces an overall positive impact on the energy grid, where the excess electricity generated by the house’s solar voltaic panels is stored. In fact, the renewable energy produced by the Net Zero Energy Home may find its way across the street running the neighbor’s dish washer or grinding the morning’s coffee beans.
“If you put it into the house, there may be times when it’s producing too much, and (the residents) can’t use it all,” said Lynn. “If we put it on the grid, we know it’s all going to be used. We have meters to tell us exactly how much we’re putting out and how much is being drawn down, and we compare those numbers. We know we are producing more energy than this house is using.”
It doesn’t take long for a visitor to realize the Net Zero Energy Home does not stand alone as an energy-efficient house in the neighborhood. Solar panels are a common sight on the roofs throughout Midway Park, producing energy to heat the water used by the residents within. The solar hot water helps cut down on the energy demands of the AMCC homes. Hot water is usually about 20 percent of the electrical bill for a house, and the panels take care of about 75 percent of the home’s hot water needs, said Lynn.
“We’re starting out with a very efficient house, and then we did some additional upgrades to this unit,” said Lynn. “We put insulation under the slab, a higher level of attic and wall insulation, and radiant barrier sheeting under the roof, which reflects heat from the sun and lowers cooling costs.”
Additional solar panels for energy and the use of recycled material also helped improve the homes environmental footprint, noted Lynn. The overall impact for the residents and the environment can be seen in everything from improved air quality, energy star appliances and water efficiency within the home to a bioswale outside, which naturally filters pollutants that can escape into the rivers and water table through storm drains. The home is also located in a neighborhood encouraging walking because of its close vicinity to local resources.
Lynn said the house was not intentionally created to stand out in the neighborhood. Rather, the tides of construction and ongoing environmentally-friendly efforts combined to create an opportunity to set up the first Net Zero Energy Home aboard a continental Marine Corps installation. The overall goal for AMCC is to generate as much renewable energy as possible and make the largest impact on the grid and environment.
“It happened to be in the right sequence so we could make this happen,” said Lynn. “We’re trying to generate as much renewable energy as we possibly can. We have an 8,000-house portfolio, and we are looking at things portfolio wide. This one was neat because it was a one-house kind of thing.”
The parent company to AMCC, Lend Lease, entered into an agreement with the government to cut their energy consumption by 20 percent by 2015, said Lynn. The efficient homes and the renewable energy efforts are all part of the process, and expansion of these efforts is on the horizon.
“Right now we’ve done 2,200 of the solar hot water systems,” said Lynn. “It’s the largest project in the continental United States. We’re looking to expand it to about 3,000 homes, which will continue to make it even larger.”
Further expansions are planned for the photo-voltaic panels, which will feed even more renewable energy onto the grid while the panels for solar hot water reduce the need to draw energy off the grid. The efforts to install such panels have been accomplished by working with solar-partner companies. They pay to install the panels and collect on some of the long-term energy benefits generated by the projects and government programs encouraging energy efficiency, said Lynn.
“It’s reducing energy to save money, and it’s helping the Department of Energy meet their goals,” said Lynn. “It’s really just the way we operate and the right thing to do.”