Wisdom Way Documentary

Catherine Stryker of Cat's Eye Productions has posted excepts from her documentary film about Wisdom Way Solar Village on Youtube for all to enjoy. There are four clips, to watch the whole thing click over to Amherst Community Television.

Wisdom Way on the blogs

Susan Kraemer has written up a nice piece on Wisdom Way over on Home Design Find using some of Doug Mason's photos from our Flickr account. The article does an excellent job of summarizing the project and the remarkable prospect of a $300 annual energy bill.

(A side note: those last 2 photos in the piece are from Katywil, I'll have to make my Flickr tags a bit more explicit. Also remarkable is getting the Google alerts and seeing this article re-blogged on other sites, one of them a luxury real estate blog. The internet is a remarkable, and strange, thing.)

Wisdom Way Data

Some great reading from Robb Aldrich of Steven Winter Associates on the performance of the units at Wisdom Way.

SWA Report on WWSV Heating Systems

Unbuilt Projects - Leverett house

For whatever reason, sometimes a project or a particular design is never realized. From time to time we'll revisit some of these and share them.

This particular home was designed for a local entrepreneur for a hilltop in Leverett, MA. There were two distinct designs presented, both with special considerations of views and solar orientation.

Builders Zero In on New Goal of Energy-Neutral Housing - WSJ

Wisdom Way seems to be a hot topic these days. In todays Wall Street Journal there's an article by  Jim Carlton on "Energy Neutral" projects which uses the Solar Village as an example. The article focuses on electricity use and zero-energy so it makes no mention of the super-insulation necessary to achieve this goal. The difference in home prices that Anne Perkins of RDI gives is largely due to the PV panels, but the savings realized by her contractors in the insulating of these units will reap huge savings with relatively little cost.

I also think the differences in the projects in the article, the price of a unit at Wisdom Way is about half the price of a 600 square foot addition in LA. And *ahem* "offset(ing) the cost of the panels by not having to buy a big furnace"?!?!  Even without any special insulation they would not have to buy a big furnace in LA! Tomorrows high temperature in Hermosa Beach is 67, which is where many of us here in New England set our thermostats! I know it gets nippy by the beach there, but put on a sweater folks!

Real Time Energy Data

Another piece of making our live's more efficient is real time monitoring of our homes usage of electricity . It is another emerging field that already seems crowded with  solutions, yet there are few options on the market right now.

This week in Copenhagen a call to action was issued by a number of large companies to make real time monitoring become more widespread. There is a nice piece by Martin LaMonica over on cnet about the announcement.  There is also a gallery accompanying the piece which includes links to hardware and software solutions. We are anxious to get some of our clients started with real time monitoring of their electricity usage and hope that all this data will also in turn help us make our designs more efficient.

As the article mentions, until there is real time variable pricing to accompany the monitoring, there won't be a financial incentive for users to run their appliances at off peak time, thereby eliminating the need for new power plants and reducing peak demand which is the most polluting and expensive.

Real time monitoring will become essential in zero-net energy building and help the occupants manage their usage so as to achieve that balance.

Changes That Pay

A recent article in the Boston Globe Magazine outlines some ways to save energy and lists some resources for audits, building materials, and an upcoming rebate program for appliances. On the last page the article makes mention of RDI's Wisdom Way project which ADI designed.