Additional income instead of additional costs – Europe’s most modern solar community makes it possible
The 59 energy-plus houses and the commercial building “Sonnenschiff” situated in front produce more energy per year than they use. So much more that the tenants enjoy additional income rather than paying additional costs.
Climate protection begins in front of one’s own doorstep. According to an estimate of the Deutsche Energie-Agentur (German Energy Agency), around 20 percent of the total CO2 emissions in Germany are caused through heating and the warm-water supply of residential and office buildings. This is not a recent discovery as the inventor of the energy-plus house and solar pioneer Rolf Disch well knows.  For more than 30 years, the Freiburg architect has been building with an orientation to the sun. His buildings are not only constructed with ecological materials, but they also use regenerative energy, in fact they even produce it. His first work, a space capsule-like building called heliotrop, in which he himself lives up to this day, was created in the middle of the 1990s and is still representative for energy-optimized living and for his energy-plus houses.
At first glance, the interior value of these houses is not really recognizable. The first impression of the solar community is one of familiarity - a housing estate of terraced houses with two and three-storey buildings. But a very coloured collection of houses: advised by the Berlin artist Erich Wiesner, the façades shine in light blue, orange, red, yellow and green, colourful like a meadow of flowers. The fact that they show a considerably positive end result with regard to energy is due to their special construction: The houses have been built from factory-finished modules in flexible sizes using the wooden post-and-beam construction method. Each individual wooden house is coated and wrapped in a 35 cm thick layer of insulation; special ventilation valves in the exterior wall ensure a constant supply of fresh air; the windows and casement doors are triple glazed. And a solar installation on the roof produces the necessary electricity. The entire surfaces on the south roofs of the energy-plus houses are equipped with large units of photovoltaic installations producing a peak output of three to ten kilowatts.
Through the air-tight covering, the passive utilisation of the sun is so efficient that together with the decentralised ventilation with recovery of heat and the extensive triple glazing, extra heating is almost unnecessary. Compared to a house built conventionally, the heating consumption amounts to 1,550 kilowatt hours per year (instead of 11,453) and the electricity consumption adds up to 2,291 kilowatt hours annually (instead of 3,800). All the buildings face the south and the distance between the rows of houses has been selected in such a way that the insolation is guaranteed on winter days too. If the sun does not shine for a few days, the warmth comes from a nearby wood chipper heating power station which is environmentally friendly and CO2 neutral.
In this way, the inhabitants not only save up to 1,800 euros in energy costs; there is even a surplus of about 300 euros. This is the additional electricity of the energy-plus houses that flows back into the network. In this way, additional costs are transformed into additional income.
Much to the joy of the tenants. These are all people who have an ecological conscience without being dogged and dogmatic.  For example, it goes without saying that they use rain water for their gardens; they have installed stoves, refrigerators and washing machines with the lowest current consumption of energy and they use energy-saving lamps in the whole house.
About 200 people live in the community at the Schlierberg, in the energy-plus houses and penthouses with front gardens situated on the flat roof of the five-storey office and commercial building “Sonnenschiff”. They live in the probably most modern solar housing project in Europe, which has not only been acclaimed several times for its energetic aspects. From an aesthetic point of view, “Germany’s prettiest community” (according to the association of lacquer manufacturers) is also a topic of discussion. This is surely not only due to the meadow of flowers …
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