Parade winner 'celling' the future

"You can never plan the future by the past."
- Edmund Burke

"A great flame follows a little spark."
- Dante

Miller Burton Homes, a month-old Denver-based builder of upper-end custom homes, won the Built Green Award of Excellence at this year's Parade of Homes. As is often the case, the winner edged the competition by a nose. But what could have launched Miller Burton into another league was a feature not yet on the Built Green checklist: their futuristic fuel cell.

A fuel cell is a clean-burning, quiet, on-site, state-of-the-art electricity generator. The model on display at the parade, manufactured by Plug Power Inc, takes in natural gas and puts out both electricity plus hot water. This prototype is only the 125th produced - in fact, hand-built - by the company.

"The fuel cell turned out to be a last-minute opportunity," said Russell Burton, co-owner of Miller Burton Homes. "After hearing about it, we were quite excited to have it brought out to our site and thrilled to participate with the other players."

Attached below are some details about what makes the fuel cell so intriguing. But first, a few words about the Built Green battle.

Spirited competition

Check out the tight scores in this close horse race!

Miller Burton barely edged New Homes in both the Built Green points and E-Star rating score categories. Good documentation helped tip the scales in Miller Burton's favor.

"We're obviously thrilled to have won," said Burton. "Actually, we were somewhat surprised to have won, given the competition. But as the new kid on the block, we paid attention from the get-go to the kind of details that get you Built Green points. We found the Built Green checklist remarkably compatible with what we want to do."

D.R.Horton came in third on Built Green points. Laureate Homes earned the highest home energy rating score with an 87, but finished fourth in terms of Built Green points.

Builder Built Green points E-Star rating score
Miller Burton Homes 179 85
New Homes Inc. 178 84
D.R.Horton 141 84
Laureate Homes 136 87

Miller Burton's recipe

A visit to the basement showed where the largest segment of Miller Burton's points - a total of 64 - came from: their HVAC system. High-efficiency equipment, sized properly according to calculations, pulled in 26 of those points. Two ventilation items - subslab radon ventilation plus a range hood vented to the outside - earned eight points. Installation of a pair of the new Guardian Plus heat-recovery ventilators, with HEPA filtration, garnered another 15 points.

"We saw the new Guardian Plus units displayed at the Atlanta NAHB home show this past winter and liked the idea right away," said Russell Burton. "Rheem and Eastside helped us get those units into this home."

Other energy features low-E windows and good overhangs to cut cooling loads, plus energy-heel trusses and innovative basement insulation - earned Miller Burton a bundle of points. But even more impressive was their selection of alternative building materials. Did you notice the attractive shake-shingle portion of their exterior finish was made with a durable cementitious material? How about their durable bamboo flooring? And the company made extensive use of engineered lumber in the home's frame. These and other materials choices earned them 40 Built Green points.

Based on their blower-door test results, Burton indicated that next time around he expects fewer sliding glass doors and fewer light cans in the upstairs ceiling would make house tightening an easier task. And an easy target for earning more points on the Built Green and E-Star ratings would be a modest upgrade in water heater efficiency.

The fuel cell

Plug Power's innovative fuel cell at the Miller Burton home is a combined heat-and-power generator that runs on natural gas. According to Guy Helmsetter, an on-site spokesman for R.K. Mechanical, this is Plug Power's 125th prototype of this particular model.

About the size of several refrigerators, the fuel cell package includes a "micro-refinery" that starts the energy process by stripping hydrogen from conventional fossil fuels such as natural gas, methanol, propane and even gasoline. The hydrogen then chemically reacts with the fuel cell's "stack." much like a battery works, to create electricity. In this case, Plug Power's fuel cell can generate up to 5 kilowatts of power and 34,000 BTUs of heat energy for the attached home.

When operating at optimum efficiency, up to 30 percent of the natural gas's energy content is converted to electricity - about the same system efficiency as a conventional coal-fired power plant after energy is lost through transmission lines. Additionally, up to 40 percent of the original energy is heat than can he captured and used to heat water for either domestic use or space heating.

The process is combustion-free, extremely clean and surprisingly quiet. Noise generated by the process is about the same as a residential air conditioning compressor. Emissions from the fuel cell generator include a little water vapor, carbon dioxide, and a very small amount of carbon monoxide.

Patience with fuel cells

The cost of this particular "handmade" demonstration prototype. though undisclosed, is apparently quite high. You can bank on these very sophisticated devices being extremely pricey for several years. Helmstetter foresees that once mass production begins and parts become interchangeable, reliability will go up and prices will drop substantially.

Don't expect this technology to be widely available in the near terns. During the Parade, Xcel spokesman Steve Roalsted suggested on a local TV broadcast that residential fuel cells may not be in widespread use for another 10 to 20 years. Helmstetter is much more optimistic. He believes that fuel cells will be both cost-effective and available for remote-site installations within a few years. Indeed, the on-site advantages of fuel cell use can he compelling. The bet here is that fuel cells will be a viable player within 10 years.
Proponents and the popular press sometimes refer to fuel cells as "alternative energy resources." That's not accurate. The wind and sun are "alternative energy resources" - alternatives, that is, to conventional fossil fuels - whenever their power is captured by wind turbines or photovoltaic energy cells. By comparison, fuel cells are on-site power generators that consume hydrogen to co-generate electricity and heat. Splitting the necessary hydrogen free from its chemical bond to any substance, be it water or a fossil fuel, consumes energy. The long-term challenge is to figure out the most efficient and effective means of obtaining hydrogen to run the fuel cells.

Team effort

Miller Burton's fuel cell was made possible by a collaborative effort that included the following players:

• The Governor's Office of Energy Management and Conservation;
• Plug Power, Inc. (www.plug-power.com);
• Xcel Energy and their consulting engineer, R.K. Mechanical;
• Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA);
• the City and County of Denver: and
• Built Green Colorado.

Hats off to all parties. especially Miller Burton, for providing most of the Parade visitors with their first view of a promising technology. Fuel cells should have a bright future.

Steve Andrews consults with builders for E-Star Colorado and writes on energy issues (sbandrews@att.net). E-Star (www.e-star.com), is a nonprofit home energy rating system that works with both new and existing homes statewide.

2008 Built Green Colorado

Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, 9033 E. Easter Place, Suite 200, Centennial, CO 80112
(303) 778-1400 fax: (303) 733-9440  info@builtgreen.org

Last Updated: 10/05/2007