Remodeling Amory Lovins' home

Amory Lovins' house

Between 1982 and 1984, more than 100 volunteers and a dozen professional builders helped RMI cofounder Amory Lovins construct a state-of-the art energy-efficient home in Old Snowmass, Colo. 

The house would draw almost all of its space and water-heat from solar energy, use about a tenth the usual amount of household electricity, and  grow bananas passively over 7,000 feet above sea-level in the Rocky Mountains.

Way ahead of its time then, this private residence and RMI headquarters has just leaped forward another twenty years. 

We are in the last throes of a major renovation of Amory's landmark home. 

The project will have taken almost a year. 

It could have been finished sooner, Amory says, save for the constant introduction of new ideas and technology for improvements and modernization. 

Let me run through some of the major changes. 

The building's photovoltaic system has been supplemented with a 6-kilowatt array of the most efficient solar panels on the market, courtesy of SunPower. 

The system will be one of the first to be "islandable" -- able to run gracefully with or without the grid. 

With new batteries sucking up the extra electricity, the house will have several days worth of energy stored. The building will also have two of the most efficient residential air-to-air heat exchangers ever constructed, capturing heat from the interior to heat incoming fresh air with peak flow efficiency around 95 percent and average efficiency close to 100 percent. 

Amory Lovins

As Amory likes to say, "In God we trust, all others bring data." A total of 140 sensor points will feed a new Johnson Controls data acquisition system. 

Information on solar power generation, electricity flows, and internal and external climate conditions will be available online, and to all visitors via a screen in the building's entryway. The data will allow the building's occupants and admirers to have a much better sense of the building's performance, and how to correct any problems. 

Other updates include new xenon-filled windows (supplied by Alpen Glass at cost) with R-14 (or for one unit R-19) center-of-glass insulating value, improved insulation and air tightening, an LED-dominated fifth lighting retrofit, a daylighting retrofit, radiant solar floor heating, and a new highly efficient electric stove integrated with specially designed pots to save around 60 percent of the energy normally needed for cooking. 

In 1983, the focus of the house was to use as little primary energy as possible, but our clearer understanding of climate change has altered Amory's set of design priorities to save carbon first, and primary energy second. 

"This building is not a museum of 1983 state-of-the-art efficiency technologies," Amory says about his domicile. "My objective now is to show the current stat-of-the-art, and to displace as much carbon as I can."  

Since electric consumption peaks in the winter in the Rocky Mountains, the new solar panels are angled to maximize winter output and displace the most coal from inefficient intermediate load power plants.  

At night, the house will run on 'additional' windpower built from our purchase.  

Why be on the grid and use windpower rather than the stored solar battery power? 

"We're already on the grid so we can sell back surplus electricity to save more carbon.  The reason we buy wind at night, use solar in the day, and stored solar only for backup when the grid is down is to displace the maximum amount of carbon. If we used stored solar at night we would pay for the in-out cycle loss from the batteries, which would amount to less solar to displace coal," Amory says. 

Amory states the house will be fossil-fuel-free (no nonrenewable grid electricity or propane) and could be 'combustion-free' by the end of the remodel, though that remains to be seen. 

So, what lessons can Joe Homeowner take from these renovations? 

"Whether you're building or remodeling, go to the state-of-the-art technology and integrative design. You'll get many benefits from each expenditure and your building will work better, be a nicer place to live, and cost less," Amory says.