The 752 Skyview is a Custom-Built Contemporary home manufactured by Dvele in 2019. Net positive, green, all electric with an 8.4Kw solar system, LED lights, CAT 6a prewired, and HVAC with the efficient 24/7 air filtration and energy exchange system. All of those features contribute to a self-powered home that aims at eliminate your utility bill.
Heating and cooling a home is one of the largest energy uses, so naturally, this is an area of great opportunity in terms of energy efficiency. And the underlying element that drives this efficiency/inefficiency is airflow. Just like a car on a hot summer day, when we use the A/C, if we keep the windows cracked open, the inflow of hot air and the outflow of cool air means the cabin never reaches its cool state, and worse, we overuse our A/C system which will require more maintenance costs and burn more fuel. A home works the same way.
When the home’s seal, or energy envelope, is leaky, it’s the equivalent of driving with the windows down. Traditional site-built homes are notorious for being “leaky” with respect to air control. Some of it has to do with the variation of contractor competence, some of it has to do with the fact that they’re exposed to outdoor elements over a prolonged period of time which causes materials to expand and contract which subsequently compromises seals, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that the regulatory tolerances for great home efficiency are not required.
A Dvele home is an equivalent of driving with the windows up. Our homes are meticulously designed and engineered with airflow control and efficiency as a primary goal. We design our homes like you would a spaceship and utilize the most advanced materials and assembly techniques in their production to achieve this. They are also produced indoors in a controlled environment by fulltime specialists so we further avoid variations of competency and quality compromises associated with weather conditions. We then voluntarily submit them to testing in order to meet the most stringent home efficiency requirements listed by the Passive House metrics. In addition to this, we also utilize low- load, high- tech, and highly efficient mechanical systems, LED lighting, smart water heaters, energy recapture systems and energy monitoring that further improves the operational efficiency of the home. And by not utilizing natural gas as an energy source, we further avoid unhealthy, indoor air quality issues, we don’t contribute carbon emissions that are associated with extracting and transporting this fuel source, and we eliminate a potentially dangerous and combustible element within the home.
This all equates to a Dvele home needing to use 84% less energy per square foot than the average American home (referred to as Energy Use Intensity or EUI). With this kind of operational home efficiency, being a 100% solar-powered home is within reach.
The solar array that’s included with each Dvele home is capable of capturing all of the home’s anticipated energy needs each day. And our mechanical systems are designed to employ solar power throughout the day and pass that excess energy to the grid unless a battery storage system is employed. But while solar power generation alone on-site is great, it does not protect a home from power outages. A solar panel-only home still needs the grid as its “battery”, which leads to the last important aspect of being a self-powered home–battery storage and backup.
While solar panels are now required on all new homes in California, battery backup systems, currently, are not. But they are needed if a solar-enabled house wants to maintain power when the main power grid is shut off. If you live in California, some estimates say that it will take PG&E over 10 years and billions of dollars that it doesn’t have to update the grid and delivery systems to be more resilient and resistant to shut-offs during natural disaster events such as wildfires. So the prospect of having a battery backup system is smart.
At Dvele, all direct-to-consumer homes, include an installed solar panel system AND a battery backup system in the price of their home.
Beyond resiliency, Dvele homes with battery storage store the energy they produce, and self-consume that clean energy to get through peak power without any draw from the grid. The batteries can also store excess energy that can charge an electric car at night, and be exported onto the grid to provide clean energy to your neighbors even when the sun is down.
If you are interested in more info about this project, See the featured property video brought to you by Dvele.com.
