The Leading Edge
Noah Ornstein, founding partner of Ark, a development firm focused on sustainable housing in Los Angeles, says his company is preparing for a sun-powered future by reviewing the best applications for solar installations on building sites and prototyping ways to embed panels into exterior cladding systems. Ark is committed to offering solar options, he says, but financing terms are much more favorable for homeowners and the companies that lease solar systems than for developers and builders.
Ideal Homes built Oklahoma’s first geothermal and solar-ready community, Via Verde, in 2013 to a lukewarm reception. “I’d love to tell you that we put solar on a couple hundred homes and give a bunch of shining examples, but it’s not there yet,” says Steve Shoemaker, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. To date, Ideal has built one solar-powered home—also the nation’s first LEED-certified home—in 2006 in Oklahoma City.
But the company plans to build on this first step. “Builders have a great opportunity right now to test things and start that dialogue with home buyers, because it’s where we’re headed,” Shoemaker says. “And when it becomes more mainstream, we’ll be in the best position because we’ve been on the leading edge of discussing it with home buyers.”
“Solar is close to going over the line,” agrees h.a. Fisher Homes’ Hugh Fisher. “The more people who see panels going on people’s roofs, the more people want them. But we have to make them affordable, and with the tax credit we’re about there, where it makes sense.”
