Search For:

Share This

Mr. Sun, Richard Levine

Amid acres of hardwood forest, the buildings in a sunny clearing take center stage at Richard Levine’s place. The largest building, the 35-year-old family home, features an astonishing and intricate slanting metal-and-glass fabrication that’s both the south wall and a major part of the roof. Nearby, a row of glossy new solar panels flies high above two smaller outbuildings.

Throughout his working life, Levine has been fascinated with finding and using energy efficiently. At Raven Run, just south of Lexington, he has been using the sun to grow a new kind of crop—ideas for a different energy future.

An architect by training and a long-time professor at the University of Kentucky, Levine is also a tinkerer by nature. He is not content to simply talk about theories or ask students to make dreamy drawings. He determined early on to build things himself, testing new ideas in the real world.

A living experiment
Levine’s experiments center on a key idea: the more energy we can use from the sun, the less energy we will need from other sources.

The home’s position on the site and the placement of the windows direct light and warmth into particular areas, in a passive manner. Other built-in features work in an active way, capturing and storing or releasing the sun’s heat with physical devices. With no central furnace or air-conditioning compressor, the amount of electricity required for this 3,300-square-foot home is quite small compared to a conventional home of a similar size.

It’s not easy being an energy pioneer. Levine spent a year in libraries and at the drawing board in the 1970s to develop the details before construction began. At this location, a 54-degree angle for the south wall and roof catches the most low winter sunlight. Levine also calculated the exact angles and dimensions of the individual parts of the large surface so they would block most of the hot, high summer sunlight.

Vertical rows of narrow windows on the south provide light for the interior. Specially constructed solar heat collectors, arranged between each row of these windows, help manage the home’s internal temperature. Warm air is transferred to bins of crushed stone (a system he later patented) in the home’s basement, a sort of heat bank that can be drawn upon as needed. Different kinds of windows in other parts of the home also provide carefully directed light.

Commercially available energy-saving double-pane windows in the 1970s were either far too expensive for Levine’s budget or the wrong sizes. So he crafted his own. When his first versions allowed too much condensation to form on the inside, he had to modify them.

“Today we are building homes differently,” Levine says. “Some of the things we did years ago are now already obsolete in terms of the best practices.” As interest in energy efficiency has increased, the range of products and design ideas available for the general public is much larger. Ten years ago, Levine added a geothermal heat pump for even better humidity control.

Power for neighbors
Since the beginning, Levine’s buildings have been connected to the regular power grid. The local co-op, Blue Grass Energy, provides electricity for the home’s refrigerator and laundry appliances, lights, and stereo system. The separate design studio building also requires a small amount of electricity for its computers and office machines.

Recent improvements in the design and function of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are now giving Levine an opportunity to explore new energy concepts. A PV system mounted on the outbuildings began producing electricity there last December.

PV panels produce direct current, but America’s residential power system is based on alternating current. Special devices, called inverters, are needed to change the output of the solar panels into the correct form of electricity.

In older systems linked together to feed a single large inverter, a cloud or shadow passing over a single panel lowered the output of the whole array. “In older arrays, if one panel stops functioning,” Levine says, “it can shut the whole system down like an old-fashioned string of Christmas tree lights with a single burned-out bulb. But the individual microinverters in this system are inherently more efficient and reliable.”

On very cloudy days and during the night, electricity still flows the usual way, from the power grid into Raven Run. But when the sun’s shining, things are quite different. “On many days, we are producing electricity here at a much greater rate than we’re using it,” Levine says.

Net metering connections to Blue Grass Energy’s lines allow the solar array to send that extra electricity into the grid to provide power to other neighborhood co-op members. During summer afternoons when conventional generating plants are running at capacity, power from Levine’s 5.25-kilowatt system can help meet the community’s demand for electricity.

Cathryn Gibson, vice president of member services at Blue Grass Energy, says, “We’re very excited that one of our co-op members is exploring new ways to use renewable energy, not just for his own benefit but also for other co-op members.”



NEW ENERGY CONCEPT

University of Kentucky professors Richard Levine and Ernest Yanarella founded the Center for Sustainable Cities. Together with colleagues around the world, they have proposed a new concept that could help solve many of today’s energy problems.

The Sustainable Area Budget takes into account all the resources of an area, how those resources can be used most effectively, and whether these activities can continue over the long term while maintaining the overall environment.

It’s a much broader concept than the carbon footprint, and uses data from many sources to predict multiple energy impacts over time. While individual actions are considered, the Sustainable Area Budget is a community approach.

Don't Leave! Sign up for Kentucky Living updates ...

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.