MONCTON – Solaire Homes is building 100 net-zero and highly energy-efficient homes in a new neighbourhood in Moncton’s north end that will also be a test site for NB Power and Siemens’ smart grid project.

The neighbourhood, called North Branch, will be New Brunswick’s first solar-powered neighbourhood.

The homes will have the latest smart energy technologies, including home energy management systems, rooftop solar panels and smart energy storage batteries.

“This is a really exciting opportunity to be able to integrate energy-efficient housing with some of the newer technologies that are being developed by NB Power and Siemens,” said Solaire Homes president Paul Arsenault. “We are, in effect, going to be a showcase for some of those new technologies – to prove them, to demonstrate them, to educate people as to how they work, and just be able to employ some of these technologies with the end result to improve the environment.”

The homes will use geothermal heat pumps, air-source heat pumps, and solar panels. The energy will then be stored in batteries in the homes.

“These homes are all going to be connected to NB Power’s electric grid. So the batteries that will be in the homes themselves are really there as a short term backup and as a buffer to moderate electricity that’s going to be exchanged with the grid,” Arsenault said.

Arsenault explains that a net-zero energy home is one that can produce as much energy as it consumes in the average of the year. To ensure that it contributes as much energy to the grid as it takes, it has to have the right technologies and design.

With the national building code constantly improving in terms of energy use, energy efficiency is already top of mind for many builders and developers. For Solaire, the environmental aspect of the project is key.

“If we can capture most of our energy that we need from the sun and from the ground, and we are not as dependent on other sources of energy that might come from fossil fuels and things like that, then we’ve succeeded, and that’s what drives us,” he added.

Brent Staeben, NB Power’s director for Smart Grid Atlantic, said Siemens is developing a nano-grid controller, which will manage the home energy use.

“It will overtime understand how the home is using energy, how much it’s generating from a solar, how much it can store,” he said.