Hive 50 Honors
For harvesting energy usage data to improve neighborhoods on a building-by-building basis, open sourcing community design, engineering, and construction toward regenerative energy.
What You Need To Know
Alabama Power’s Smart Neighborhood is a state-of-the-art community of 62 homes equipped with emerging energy-efficient technologies, materials and appliances, all connected to the Southeast’s first community-scale microgrid. Performance data and energy usage gathered from the homes’ innovative features provide insight into how neighborhoods of the future will function, and which programs and services can provide energy solutions for customers. The microgrid has the capacity to generate more than 600,000 kilowatt hours of energy annually, which is enough to power the neighborhood and provide support to the existing electric grid. The microgrid includes a 330 kWh AC solar array, around 600 kWh of battery storage and 400 kW of natural gas backup generation.
Who’s Involved
Smart Neighborhood is a collaborative partnership with Birmingham, Ala.-based Signature Homes, Southern Co., and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Time Stamp
Construction of the neighborhood completed in spring 2018. The first homeowners moved into the neighborhood in November 2017, and the microgrid became operational at the end of 2017.
