Photovoltaic (PV) solar is the supermodel of the sustainable-energy scene, walking the rooftop runways and flaunting its eco-swagger to the world. But like any popular beauty, PV solar owes its success to a team of designers, craftsmen and marketing mavens; it may walk the skyline alone as the public face of the Green movement, but it takes an integrated system to make it beautiful. For builders looking to cash in on the groundswell of consumer interest in solar energy, there are two lessons to be learned in this analogy. The first lesson is integration. Solar integration should take place at the design, construction and sales stages of project development and it should involve the builders, installers and customers as much as possible. The second lesson is that sexy sells. Builders who leverage the appeal of solar to sell the unglamorous, but still necessary, efficiency upgrades are usually successful. Integrating Solar

The appeal of solar is measured in the amount of energy usage it offsets. Before a buyer puts down $50,000 on a rooftop PV system, they will want to know how much of their home's energy it will provide. Unless the home has been constructed with solar in mind, the energy offset provided by PV solar will be small.

"There is a lot of lower-hanging fruit that needs to be picked first,
says Blake Jones, president of Namaste Solar Electric, a Colorado-based solar installer. "If you slap some panels on an inefficient home, you'd be looking at offsets in the 10-percent range at best. But if you take care of the efficiency first by insulating the home properly, by installing efficient lighting, by not putting dormers on south-facing roofs, then solar can give you offsets closer to 100 percent. When you tell a homebuyer that their PV array could provide all of their home's energy needs, you get their attention.

Martha Rose, president of Rose Construction, is one builder who knows how effective an integrated approach to solar can be. Her company places strong emphasis on ecologically-friendly home building. Her Rainier Vista development, consisting of thirteen townhomes in the Seattle area, comes prewired for PV solar arrays. But as Rose herself says, "Prewiring for solar is not the big news with these homes. It's part of the package but just as important are the other steps we've taken to make the homes efficient. Things like energy heel roof trusses, fluorescent lighting, good insulation-these things should be the first steps on the way to solar. We insulate to R-60 on the lids and R-26 on the walls. If you just put up solar, you're not really providing a Green option or a good value to the homebuyer.

Builders who want to offer solar should make the decision to do so as early as possible so that it can be integrated at the design phase. Houses should be oriented for good exposure. Anything that creates shadow lines on the south sides of houses should be eliminated. These include obvious things like chimneys or dormer windows, but also less obvious things like roof vents can reduce the efficiency of a solar array if it casts a shadow on the panels. One example of the not-so-obvious attention to detail is the roof upgrade provided by Martha Rose Construction. "You don't want to cover a 30-year roof with equipment designed to last 50 years,
Rose says. "So you have to think of all these little things, things like roofs, if you're going to do solar.

Integration for Builders and Installers

The problem for the builder, is that insulation, lot orientation and energy heel trusses don't have the sex appeal of PV solar arrays. But it's a problem easily solved by using PV's appeal to draw attention to all the little things that go into making an ecologically-friendly home. This is where integration between builders and solar installers is crucial. If you're a builder looking for an installer to partner with, look for one that puts a lot of effort into its educational materials. And don't be shy about giving your customers face-time with the installer.

"We don't keep buyers away from our suppliers,
Rose says. "They have the answers and know a lot more about solar than we do.

Jones at Namaste Solar agrees. "We've had a lot of success by being heavily involved with the builder and their customers,
he says. "We provide training for the builder's sales people and we give presentations for their customers. We love it when a builder asks us to come in and answer people's questions. As an installer, you have to be very proactive because most people won't notice on their own all the little things that make a great solar installation.

The level of integration between builder and installer is taken a step further than presentations at Namaste Solar. "We'll help out with marketing materials,
Jones says. "For example, we have builders who will send us their brochures and we'll fill in the blanks they've left for solar information. Our marketing department will put in a few sentences and send it back to them. You can't leave that stuff to chance because the builders won't always communicate things correctly. The best builders bring us in early and we work together the whole way.

Integration, Integration, Integration

So if you're a builder looking to add solar to your portfolio, remember those three words. Integrate your customers and your solar installers. Integrate your design with the specific requirements of solar. And finally, integrate your marketing by using your customer's interest in solar energy as an opportunity to tell them about all the other improvements that go into an environmentally-friendly home. The public wants solar, so give it to them in a package that works.