design process study for the demonstration homes - Architectural ...

2.5. Case Study #5: Pardee Homes – Soleil (San Diego, California)
Pardee Homes is a large builder that builds an average of 1000 homes a year in southern
California and the Las Vegas area. Pardee’s executive management has exhibited a
personal interest in building nothing but energy efficient homes. All Pardee Homes
projects are built to meet or exceed ENERGY STAR home standards.
Pardee Homes has also been building with renewable solar electric panels in the DOE
ZEH program. To date, they have built approximately 60 ZEHs. The “Soleil” community
with more than 20 ZEHs is Pardee’s largest solar project and is supported by the DOE
program. Home range in size from 2353 ft 2 to 2730 ft 2 and are sold in the mid $800,000
range. Although the builder offered solar in other projects, only one or two ZEHs were
sold.
The only rebate was from the California Energy Commission buydown of $2.60/watt for a
PV system. The average net incremental cost including rebates for these homes was
approximately $21,000. Although the rebate was not as large as for other projects in
northern California, Pardee Homes still built ZEHs at Soleil. Besides being an innovative
builder, Pardee Homes also participated in ZEH for the following reasons:
• To gain more experience with innovative homebuilding technologies, PVs in
particular
• To differentiate themselves, attract attention, and thus sell homes more quickly
• Incentives would decrease the incremental cost
Figure 12 below shows the ZEH features of Soleil and Figure 13 shows marketing
materials.
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