BURST
From the outside, passersby would never know there was anything unique about the new home at the corner of St. George Street and 21st Avenue in Vancouver, outside of its sleek, modern design.
The house, however, is being built to net zero energy efficiency standards complete with Vancouver’s first solar roof where the panels are incorporated into the roofing material instead of being attached separately on top.
“From the outside it just looks like a metal roof,” said Guy Taylor with Averra Development, the builder. “If you look closely, obviously you can see a difference, but it just looks like a regular roof.”
Such systems are referred to as building-integrated photovoltaics — BIPV — and blending in the panels is the point, said Tim Grandjean, director of project development for Shift Energy Group, the project supplier.
“We’ve been strong believers that the future of solar is really in its integration with building materials,” Grandjean said.
How solar panels are integrated depends on the location, but Grandjean said they can be put on roofs or in the facade cladding of exterior walls.
“In our case it’s like a standing seam metal roof, like a two-in-one roofing panel with solar directly integrated into it,” Grandjean said. What the company aims for is a result that blends into the architecture “with curb appeal.”
The installation is 14-kilowatt solar system with photovoltaic panels on the house and garage.
A link to B.C. Hydro’s system through the net-metering program allows the solar panels to power the house and flow any excess electricity into the grid when the sun is shining, but draw power from the grid at night and on cloudy days.
Over a year, a highly efficient net zero design with double-insulated walls and triple-glazed windows, is intended to be capable of producing more energy than the home consumes.
For property owner Philip Sedlacek, building a sturdy energy-efficient home was a priority, but the idea of an integrated solar roof along with a net zero design seemed worth the extra cost.
“(What) was important to me was just to have a green, not a full green house, but a more sustainable house that would last longer,” Sedlacek said. “When it came to a solar roof, (it was) to have a roof that didn’t look like a typical roof that’s a roof with solar panels stuck on it that kind of looks ugly.”
Sedlacek, who is married to a Postmedia journalist, bought the property in 2021 for its prime location between Main and Fraser streets in Mount Pleasant and a block-and-a-half away from David Livingstone school where their five-year-old daughter Hana will start school in the fall.
They initially thought about renovating the existing home, but the extensive work required to lift the house and drive piles to find solid ground beneath a peat bog to fix its sagging foundation proved cost prohibitive.
Tearing down the old house to rebuild, going with a net zero design gave them a bonus of being able to build 15 per cent more floor space under a City of Vancouver incentive program for green building.
“I was willing to spend a bit more on this kind of solar roof because we hope in the end it will pay for itself with the savings from using Hydro,” Sedlacek said.
For the family, they wanted a home that will last “for many, many years,” long enough to pass on to their daughter.
And as for esthetics: “We love it,” he added. “It’s so sleek and modern and you would never know it’s a solar roof.”
For Averra, the installation turned out to be more efficient because they were able to work with Shift Energy to incorporate it with the roofing process instead of adding it on after construction. And the City of Vancouver made the inspection process straightforward.
“I feel like this is a good stepping-stone to incorporate this in more projects going forward,” Taylor said. “The industry as a whole is looking for higher efficiency from their solar gain, so I think it’s important.”
For Shift Energy, the St. George Street project “is definitely the first installation like this in Vancouver,” Grandjean said.
“Vancouver has made a lot of, and continues to make, a lot of changes as we move to a more electrified society, to incorporate forward thinking sustainable tech,” Grandjean added. “So yeah, (St. George Street) is a big deal.”