By Eliza Ridgeway
The Los Altos Hills City Council introduced ordinances April 27 intended to increase home energy conservation in Los Altos Hills in the form of new efficiency requirements and solar incentives.
A house in Los Altos Hills uses more than twice the electricity and gas of an average home in the county, according to Peter Evans of the environmental initiatives committee. PG&E charges such above-average users at a higher rate for that energy, watt by watt.
State requirements for energy efficiency in new single-family homes, defined in Title 24, set a minimum construction standard. The ordinance requires new homebuilders to beat that minimum by 15 percent, roughly equivalent to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for environmentally conscious Energy Star Certified homes. Secondary housing units and remodels are exempt from this requirement.
Updating home designs to this standard will cost approximately $2 more per square foot, according to a study prepared by CSG Consultants, hired by the committee to research the impact of the ordinance.
The energy added by photovoltaic (solar) cell systems would count toward this efficiency requirement, giving residents the option to stick with a less-efficient home design, mitigated by a solar array. Case-by-case exemptions could be brought before the planning commission, for instance for shady homes that limit the efficacy of solar panels.
As additional incentive, the council introduced an ordinance exempting up to 500 square feet of ground-mounted solar panels from a property’s maximum development area.
“We’ve already been doing this on an ad hoc basis,” Planning Director Carl Cahill said. “We’re proposing to codify that exemption.”
Exempting solar panels from the development limit on a property is the second in a series of moves by the town to increase residential solar usage. The town was the first in the region to offer free building permits for solar installation. A proposed ordinance would give residents a foot of additional development “credit” for every foot of solar panels they install, to a maximum of 500 feet.
