The first home to be built at Habitat Green Freedom, a “smart neighborhood” in Aurora being developed through a partnership between Nicor Gas and Habitat for Humanity, was officially unveiled at a ceremony on Wednesday.
Along with the now-complete show home, other houses in the neighborhood could be seen in various stages of construction. The community, which is being built near the intersection of Jericho Road and Edgelawn Drive, is planned to one day hold 17 homes designed with energy efficiency, affordability and resiliency in mind.
“We’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time,” Meena Beyers, vice president of business and community development for Nicor Gas, said at the ceremony. “The unveiling of this show home is a major accomplishment for our company, for the community and for the energy industry overall.”
The show home highlights various features that houses in the neighborhood will have, from solar panels on the roof to electric car chargers in the garage. The innovation going into these homes is expected to make them more resilient against inclement weather plus lead to lower utility costs, making them more affordable.
One example of the houses’ innovative features is the method used to create the walls of the structure: foam blocks connected by plastic webs that fit together sort of like LEGO bricks.
The modular foam pieces, made by BuildBlock Building Systems, are interlaced with rebar as they build up the walls of the structure, then are used as a mold for concrete. This building method is expected to make the houses both disaster resilient and energy efficient, helping to lower utility costs by 30% to 40%, BuildBlock company officials previously told The Beacon-News.
The homes are also “dual-fuel,” using both electricity and natural gas. For example, the show home features a cooktop and a furnace that use natural gas but a washing machine and an air source heat pump powered by electricity.
The dual-fuel model makes sense because it provides comfort in cold weather, efficient cooling in the summer, affordability, reliability and resiliency, says one of the many signs on the show home’s walls. Natural gas service is “extremely reliable, with little to no outages,” and can keep utility bills lower than other technologies, according to a different sign within the building.
In addition to being affordable housing for those who meet Habitat for Humanity’s qualifications, the neighborhood doubles as a research project for Nicor Gas and others. Different houses within the neighborhood will have different features to test out which residents like best and which keep utility bills lower, Beyers told The Beacon-News.
One of the two differences between houses is that some will get a natural gas generator to power the houses during outages and the others will get a battery, according to Beyers. The other difference, she said, is that some houses will get a high-efficiency air conditioner while the others get a hybrid heat pump and furnace system.
Information gathered through the study will benefit Illinois and the whole nation, Nicor President and CEO Wendell Dallas said in a speech at the ceremony on Wednesday.
“It’s going to make a tremendous difference for all — not only the generations of people living today, but generations well into the future,” he said. “We’re proving that clean energy, a clean energy future, is not only accessible, but it’s here.”
Nicor Gas in particular will use the data collected to inform its programs and services that are designed to help customers manage the way they use energy, according to Beyers. Plus, she said the research will help the company tackle “some of the big energy challenges we have in the state” by understanding how gas and electric, with renewable energy, can work together to make things more affordable.
And while this “smart neighborhood” project is a first for Nicor, its parent company Southern Company has others in states like Georgia and Alabama. Chase Cortner, a Southern Company researcher, said Habitat Green Freedom will help the company collect data from homes in cold weather climates, something it hasn’t done with a project like this before.
“A lot of new technologies have various benefits and advantages to them, but not all of them are necessarily cost-effective for us or for the customers,” Cortner said.
The company is also partnering with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and GTI Energy on the research project. Beyers said that the laboratory is interested in replicating and scaling up some of the things being done through this project to make a bigger impact, something Habitat for Humanity is also interested in.
Not only is Habitat Green Freedom the first “smart neighborhood” built to be affordable, but it is also a first for Habitat for Humanity, which is also partnering with Nicor to bring one to Carpentersville.
“Nicor has been incredible in helping us to think beyond what we need today and to show us what’s possible for tomorrow,” Sarah Brachle Wagner, CEO of the Chicagoland Habitat for Humanity, said during the ceremony. “This is an opportunity for us to look at what’s possible here but also to share this within the network and hopefully be a model for future generations of affordable housing.”
All of the homes in Habitat Green Freedom will go to those in Habitat for Humanity of Northern Fox Valley’s home ownership program, which can be applied for at habitatnfv.org. According to the website, applicants are selected for the program based on their level of housing need, willingness to become partners in the program and their ability to repay the no-profit, no-interest loan.
All of the houses planned in the first phase of construction, a total of six, are expected to be completed around next spring.
The second phase of construction, which is also expected to have six homes, is planned to be completed by the end of next year. The final phase, which will have five houses, is planned to be built by the end of 2027.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
