What if you could harness the power of the sun to heat and light
your home? That’s exactly what’s happening at a house in
Edmonton’s Belgravia neighbourhood. The 1,540 square-foot
bungalow, a show home by Effect Home Builders, runs mainly on
solar electricity. The house is not connected to the natural gas
line and only occasionally draws from the electric grid. It is
one of three net-zero homes — dwellings that produce as much
energy as they consume — that Effect has built in the community
near the University of Alberta. “It has enough solar modules on
it to produce as much energy as it consumes over the course of a
year,” says Les Wold, who owns Effect with partners Dale Rott
and Dave Brettelle. The solar modules Wolds speaks of are a bank
of south-facing photovoltaic panels on the home’s roof. They
capture the sun’s energy and use it to power the heating system,
the lights and the appliances, as well as heat the dwelling’s
water. “There’s only electricity in this house, there’s no gas,”
says Wold. In summer