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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman felt guilty about the fossil fuels their planes were consuming. So they decided to build a huge solar power system in their backyard. The local power utility was not amused.
Jun 3, 2004 | The directions Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman give to get to their home are inaccurate, on purpose.
The flaws theoretically make it easier to find the couple's 4,200-square-foot house in Corralitos, Calif., located in a gated enclave in the hills just south of Santa Cruz. After I drove up a narrow mountain road past twisty live oaks and a flock of wild California quail, I learned that the distances indicated on the directions were just a tad shorter than they actually are on the road. Ken explains that they've shaved off a tenth of a mile from each leg of the trip to get guests to look for that next turn in the road just before it appears.
It's a tiny hack of human behavior, social engineering through clever manipulation of data, typical of the two Caltech grads who live here. Kenneth Adelman is a retired tech entrepreneur in his 30s who sold his last company to Nokia for millions in stock; Gabrielle is the bookkeeper for the Santa Cruz Flying Club, where the couple are avid aviators.
The Adelmans do things differently, if in their judgment it means doing them better. Even if that involves going head to head with the power giant Pacific Gas & Electric or to court with a celebrity like Barbra Streisand.
The Adelman's entire house is a vast experiment in alternative energy, but you'd never know it just by seeing it. Five miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, on California's Coast Range, the house is situated in golden, oaky hills. So spacious that it includes an entire guest wing the couple rarely uses, the house is hardly the centerpiece of the property; it's the landscape that dominates, dotted with live oaks, yielding to sweeping views of the surrounding forested mountains, down into the populated valleys of Watsonville.
On a sunny day like the one on which I visited, this expansive, multimillion-dollar home, the air conditioning, even the heated pool and hot tub outside, are all powered by the sun. The three electric cars in the Adelmans' garage also, indirectly, get their electricity from the house's primary energy source, a 2,880-square-foot solar array, which sits some 600 feet downslope from the home, out of view, on a south-facing hillside. This system, including backup batteries, cost $360,000 to build (although the Adelmans received a $135,000 rebate from the state government as a partial subsidy.) It was thought to be the largest such residential system in California when it was installed in 2001, and has a theoretical output of 30.5 kilowatts, but really produces more like 27 kilowatts in sunny summertime production.
The Adelmans are environmentalists, but one of their favorite hobbies is flying their own planes and helicopter, which means that their fossil fuel consumption is not insignificant. Gabrielle decided that with all the flying they were doing in their private aircraft, they should find other ways to mitigate their own contributions to environmental pollution and global warming. That led them to purchase the electric cars, which in turn sent their electricity bills skyrocketing. So they decided to go solar.
But the Adelmans aren't living off the proverbial grid. On the contrary, they're engaged in a symbiotic relationship with the power grid, feeding energy back to it, as well as drawing down from it. The system that powers their house, a set of solar panels designed by EcoEnergies of Sunnyvale, Calif., generates so much power when the sun is shining that the Adelmans feed power back to the grid. They only draw power from the grid at night, when it's dark, or when the weather is bad. In a process known as "net metering," the excess energy their solar system produces during the day serves as a credit so that they can light and heat their home at night, as well as charge up their electric cars when they're least likely to be driving them, and when overall power demand is at its lowest.
The Adelmans are obviously not a typical family -- and the example they set is not easily duplicated. But they are vigilant and innovative about reducing their impact on the environment. They subscribe to the belief that alternative sources of energy coupled with the right kind of technological innovation can deliver a better world, if the entrenched interests would just get out of the way. And if they won't, it's worth fighting them.
To get their solar system online feeding power back to the grid, as well as into their home, the Adelmans had to fight Pacific Gas & Electric before the Public Utilities Commission, as well as endure having their power shut down during the dispute. But with their own home, they've managed to show just how far individuals can go, if they have the means, toward changing patterns of power consumption, even while maintaining all the trappings of a retired tech entrepreneur's lifestyle. In an era when gas prices are climbing with no end in sight, their example is more relevant than ever. And if new legislation currently before the California state Assembly passes, many other Californians will soon be living in homes a little more like the Adelmans'.
