PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

Arizona housing development could equal 1.3 MW of off-grid PV

An upscale housing development in the wilds of Arizona is set become the first major off-grid PV community in the US. Greenwood Partners, which began selling 2-hectare lots of land in the high Chaparral at an elevation of about 1,300 m in August, is including a basic 1.65 kW stand-alone PV system in the price of its five models of houses, starting at $100,000.

	© Team Vets - Keller Williams Realty
Home on the range: Houses on an Arizona off-grid development will each start with a basic 1.65 kW PV system that can be upgraded.

The PV system currently includes ten Sharp 165 W modules, 12 high-capacity 6 V deep-cycle batteries, and an MX-60 charge controller and FX2024 inverter from Outback Power Systems Inc. John Balfour, president of PerfectPower Inc., a Phoenix-based renewable energy integrator which has an exclusive contract to supply the systems, declined to break out the cost of the system. He expects homeowners, who will be able to purchase service contracts, to upgrade the systems to an average capacity of 2.5 kW, depending on the size house they choose. With 545 lots available, the installed capacity should be between 800 kW and 1.3 MW when the build-out is completed, probably sometime in 2006. Nearly 60 lots have been sold so far, but only one house, Greenwood's model home, has been built. A grand opening was scheduled for the end of August.

Balfour says the Outback equipment has been designed to allow the conversion of the development's PV installations into a mini-grid. Since half the homes will probably be sold as vacation residences or secondary homes and empty for extended periods, the idea is to sell or trade unused electricity to neighbors. »Probably in five to ten years, you will find the local utility company knocking on the door, asking to be connected,« says Balfour.

Doc Pethtel of Keller Realty, which is representing Greenwood, says he is planning talks with Nevada state officials about starting a housing development with grid-connected PV systems on several hundred homes.