Eastern Kentucky housing builder looks to the sun for relief from crushing power bills
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
WHITESBURG — In her old house — built more than 100 years ago by a coal company — Lois Thompson says she couldn’t afford to run the heat pump on her fixed income.
When winter cold seeped through the walls, Thompson, 76, sectioned off a room by hanging up her son’s $10 childhood quilt; she would sit by a propane heater until the heat drove her into the cold kitchen.
“They’ll freeze you to death in the winter,” she said of her house and others like it that were built to be heated by a coal stove. “For the people like me that don’t have the money, you’re living in a drafty house. … You can’t insulate it. You don’t have the money for that.”
The propane heater, the house and the cold are now memories.
Thanks to a local housing nonprofit, Thompson moved into a new house in August on the site where her old home had stood. Also gone are her fears of high electricity bills. She paid just $21.61 in October, slightly above the minimum charge for utility customers in her community.
“It still don’t seem real, and I’m living in it,” she said. “I say, ‘Lord, I thank you.’ That’s all I can do.”
The reason behind her rock-bottom power bill: a years-long effort by Whitesburg-based HOMES Inc. to build “net zero” homes. That is, houses with zero monthly electrical costs because of their energy-efficient construction and rooftop solar panels that generate power.
For years, the nonprofit — its full name is Housing Oriented Ministries Established for Service Inc. — had been grappling with the challenge of responding to some of Kentucky’s highest electricity costs in a region where incomes are low.
The devastating floods that overwhelmed Eastern Kentucky in 2022 wiped out thousands of homes and also brought new resources for housing, allowing HOMES Inc. to look toward the power of the sun. The nonprofit has built five “net zero” homes including Thompson’s and is now working on a new housing development for flood survivors that will have eight “net zero” homes.
In a region built on coal, the pressure of soaring utility bills and the need for housing are driving a new vision of what the energy future could be.
“In our climate today, everything gets political. This doesn’t have to be about left or right. This doesn’t have to be about coal or solar. It can be about common sense, too,” said Seth Long, the executive director of HOMES Inc. “As coal built this country with energy in the past, we need to pivot. And I think solar can play a part in that pivoting to something else.”
Solar skeptic to solar advocate
Long wasn’t always a believer. He recognized that solar panels on rooftops saved electricity but didn’t think they made sense economically without subsidies because of their upfront costs.
The numbers on a spreadsheet presented by Josh Bills, an energy specialist from the economic development organization Mountain Association, convinced him otherwise. HOMES Inc. could install rooftop solar on its office in Whitesburg and be financially ahead, even if it borrowed the entire cost of the solar system. The price of rooftop solar panels has halved over the past decade.
Long had been looking for a way from under his nonprofit’s high electricity bills. Despite adding energy efficiency measures to the office such as air sealing and efficient light bulbs, the bills from Kentucky Power were still too high — up to $1,600 a month, something that wasn’t sustainable.
“The spreadsheet said that that would work, and I kept doubting and kept wondering.” Long finally said, “Why don’t we borrow $70,000 and put the system on and see if this will work?”
So, they borrowed the money and installed the solar system. It’s paid off every month since, performing better than the projections.
“We came out ahead financially, way ahead. Some of our electric bills since then have been as low as $53 a month,” Long said. “It was eye opening to me.”
Long’s horizons of what’s possible began to expand. He added solar to his maple syrup farm to save money there. He knew small businesses in Eastern Kentucky also struggled with older, energy inefficient buildings and high electricity bills, and most of the funding opportunities, such as the Rural Energy for America Program, were aimed at commercial spaces.
Fewer resources were available for working solar onto affordable housing. As tragic and terrible as the 2022 floods were, he said, there are now “resources and support in ways that we haven’t seen” for that sort of work.
Ratepayers in the 20 Eastern Kentucky counties served by investor-owned Kentucky Power have struggled for years with high electricity costs. The utility’s residential customers paid the highest average monthly bill in the state at $187.56 according to a 2023 state report, and that was before a controversial 5% rate increase was approved last year.
Power bills can soar above that average during the winter. Kentucky Power data show its poorest Kentucky ratepayers have the highest bills. That’s in part, Kentucky Power executives say, because of high electric heating costs during the winter. Poor insulation and energy inefficient electric heating cause bills to reach north of $400 a month when it’s cold.
Thompson said she sees Facebook posts during the winter by people “just about in tears” because “the electric bills are so high,” forcing them to decide whether to buy food or pay Kentucky Power.
That’s where the potential of “net zero” homes comes in.
“A lot of people in our area are living in houses that were designed for coal heat, and, you know, not so much heat pumps. But everybody switched from coal to electric heat, and it’s just — it’s so expensive for them,” Long said. “The flood has given us opportunities to tear down older homes and replace them with new energy efficient homes and even ‘net zero’ houses.”
HOMES Inc. has built five “net zero” homes so far, constructing an energy-efficient “envelope” around the structure and then letting the power of rooftop solar take the home all the way to “net zero.”
Their efforts have been recognized by a national nonprofit that scores energy efficiency. The HERS index compares a home’s energy efficiency to a home built by average standards, which would score 100 on the index. A home with a HERS score of 70, for example, would be 30% more energy efficient than the average home. A score of 50 would be 50% more energy efficient.
Long said Lois Thompson’s “net zero” home scored a negative 17 on the index, meaning it generates more electricity than it uses. And the nonprofit doesn’t plan to stop there.
A new future out of the floodplain
Up a gravel road on a hill just outside of Whitesburg, hopes for the future and current frustrations meet.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had originally planned to put small cottages there in a development known as Thompson Branch. When those plans didn’t work out, state officials asked HOMES Inc. for its ideas. The answer as seen on a cool afternoon earlier this month: eight soon-to-be “net zero” homes.
Over the rumble of a truck dumping cement for a new sidewalk, Joe Oliver, an assistant construction manager, explained how they’ve made it work: using smaller, affordable solar systems, only what’s needed to get to a “net zero” rating; building and designing homes ready for rooftop solar; and having an in-house solar installer to reduce costs. An average solar system runs the nonprofit around $15,000.
“The more that we can make things affordable, I think the better off everyone is everywhere,” Oliver said. “If you could generate enough money, say, to pay for the [solar] system, why wouldn’t you?”
Their in-house solar installer, Clayton “Fuzz” Johnson, a bearded 29-year-old, went to school to become a master electrician and learn how to install solar panels. Johnson said electricians are few and far between in Eastern Kentucky, let alone those who know how to install solar.
Johnson says solar is becoming more appealing in light of the rising costs Eastern Kentuckians are facing for groceries, taxes and electricity.
With the decline of coal mining and other heavy industry and the coinciding loss of population in Kentucky Power’s territory, more and more of the burden of paying for electricity has fallen on fewer and fewer people, leaving Johnson, Oliver and others voicing frustration with the situation.
““They’re going to get their return on investment,” Johnson said of Kentucky Power.
Johnson believes that with people already leaving instead of rebuilding after the floods, high power bills will only increase the outmigration.
Johnson, standing inside the frame of a “net zero” home, wondered if batteries could be hooked up to store electricity from solar from the rooftop panels. HOMES Inc. has yet to try adding home battery systems with the rooftop solar because the nonprofit considers the added cost to still be too much. The cost of batteries has plummeted in recent years due to a boost in electric vehicle production.
Some renewable energy advocates envision a virtual power plant; excess power from solar panels on homes and businesses and from electric vehicles would be pulled onto the grid to power communities as an alternative to centralized power plants.
The need and potential for home energy efficiency upgrades in the region are immense, according to HOMES Inc. and other nonprofits.
Long and others, including the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, are pushing Kentucky Power to do more than it’s currently proposing to support energy efficiency, noting the challenges of upgrading mobile homes and older homes that disproportionately make up the region’s housing stock. The utility should support energy efficiency programs for new home construction as well, the nonprofits have proposed.
Also, the utility “has a clear duty to its customers to help them limit their energy usage,” Long has written, “not only for cost savings at the household level but also in order to reduce the overall energy production needs of the region.”
Kentucky Power has argued the costs of what they’re proposing would be too high.
Johnson wants to show what’s possible with the “net zero” homes and that people don’t have to spend most of their paycheck on electricity. Letcher County is still a coal community, he said, and his father works at a coal mine, but high utility bills are melting skepticism toward solar.
“Everybody is on the same team just trying to get lower utility costs. Like, whatever it takes. We’re all in it together,” Johnson said. “Coal has its purpose, and so does solar. But I think it’s just to a point of trying to live and be sustainable.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter. Kentucky Lantern stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Donate to Kentucky Lantern here.
