A Community Approach to Solar
by Geoff Rubinstein and Daniel Glick
The people who designed Nyland CoHousing community in Lafayette had grand dreams. Our 42-home development, just east of Boulder, was built in 1990 by Wonderland Hill Development Company as the first and largest of what are now more than a dozen cohousing communities in Colorado.
From its inception, Nyland aimed at “sustainability,” which has taken different forms, including an active composting and recycling effort, low-water native landscaping, sharing tools, supporting a community garden, and not using pesticides on our 42 acres. We concentrated development on a central part of the land, with most houses designed as duplexes and triplexes to save energy, building materials, and open space for meadowlarks. We helped to initiate the RTD neighborhood EcoPass system and lobbied successfully for a bus line to service Nyland and other parts of Lafayette.
Nyland also includes a woodshop, a greenhouse, and a 6,000-square foot “Common House” with a commercial-grade kitchen, craft room, gathering areas, and a workout facility. The houses were designed with energy efficiency in mind, with blown-in cellulose insulation, and roofs at a perfect angle and orientation for solar photovoltaics when the technology—and the price—made it possible to install at a later date.
Thanks to a confluence of events, that time finally arrived.
Initially, only two houses installed solar panels (one PV and one for hot water). Recently, a combination of Xcel’s rebates (spurred by Amendment 37’s passage in 2004), a federal tax credit, improved technology, our commitment to support innovative ideas, and a growing urgency to cut carbon emissions all helped ignite a PV explosion at Nyland.
Beginning several years ago, a few homeowners installed photovoltaic systems on their roofs, using Namaste Solar Electric as their contractor. Others took notice (and, in truth, grew envious of the gleaming rooftops and backwards-spinning meters), and we began to investigate installing PV on our Common House and woodshop.
Our rooftops’ due-south orientation with a 37-degree pitch were perfect for capturing the full $4.50 per watt in Xcel rebates.
Namaste agreed to a group discount if enough homeowners installed systems and offered a progressive discount for our community buildings as more individuals signed up. We crunched numbers and shared the good news: between the rebates, the federal tax credit, our Namaste pricing, rising energy prices, and the real estate value that PV adds to our houses, installing PV was a financial no-brainer.
More homeowners expressed interest in going solar, and we schemed ways to spread solar gain across the community.
We then created a financing plan to allow everybody to pay for this at a monthly rate that would not exceed their current Xcel bills, if that was all they could afford. The community loaned individual homeowners money at well below home equity loan rates if they agreed to install PV. We could do this because Nyland Community Association is legally the same as any homeowners association; a percentage of our dues goes into a “Reserves for Replacement” fund for long-term costs like replacing roofs, etc.
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The community decided to invest some of that money towards our dream of becoming more sustainable by offering low-interest loans.
By this summer of 2008, we have installed systems ranging from 1.7 kW to nearly 10 kW. Nearly two-thirds of our homeowners have installed PV, including a retired 85-year-old Air Force Lt. Colonel and his wife, and a financially, strapped family of five.
We now have just shy of 90 kW of solar-generated electricity, reducing our carbon dioxide output by 264,000 pounds per year—and more panels are on the way.
THE FACTS
Contractors
Energy Features
- All homes have passive solar design
- All homes face south
- 89.3 kW grid-tied PV system on
- 26 homes and 2 community buildings
- Air recirculating systems in most homes
Green Features
- Native plants, grasses, edible plants, and other wildlife
- Greenhouse and a vegetable garden
- Houses designed to maximize open space
- Community composting program
- No pesticide use
Water Features
- Xeriscape
- Drip irrigation
- Low-water lawn
- Smart irrigation controller
- Low-flow plumbing fixtures
“Sustainable Community” Features
- Shared resources
- Indoor recreational areas
- Outdoor recreational areas
- Strong recycling ethic
- Community financing for solar
installations
- Participants in RTD EcoPass program
- “Common House”
- Space for trainings, conferences,
concerts, etc.
- Parking in outlying lots; car-free pedestrian community
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