At first glance, Durango at Shadow Mountain looks like just another cookie-cutter subdivision of new homes sprawling across an arid valley in Menifee, California, a growing exurb 90 miles outside Los Angeles. Walk into a $577,990 model home on Hopscotch Drive, though, and the possible future of low-carbon, climate-resilient housing comes into view. In the garage, a sleek white battery stores electricity generated by the 16 rooftop solar panels, alongside an electric car charger and an electric heat pump water heater. Out back is a heat pump that warms and cools the 2,906-square-foot house, and an induction stove sits in the open-plan kitchen. Altogether, these appliances will reduce energy consumption up to 40% in Durango compared to a conventional home, according to builder KB Home.  A model home in the Durango development in Menifee, California. Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg But what you can’t see is what could truly transform the energy system. The 78 homes under construction at Durango are connected to form a microgrid, a self-contained power system that can operate independent of California’s grid if it fails. Another 141 homes being built in an adjacent subdivision, Oak Shade at Shadow Mountain, will be connected in a second microgrid. The two developments will share a 2.3 megawatt-hour “community battery” to provide additional power in the event of an outage. While other Menifee residents are subject to rising electricity and natural gas prices, homeowners at Durango and Oak Shade will effectively be power brokers. Technology from SunPower, which is supplying both the solar panels and batteries for each house, can automatically maximize energy production and reduce costs. When a Durango resident commutes to work, for example, SunPower can turn down their thermostat and put appliances in economy mode. When that same resident gets home and utility rates spike, the house can draw on the solar electricity stored in its battery, or sell that power back to the grid. A smart panel also lets homeowners choose which appliances to power in a blackout.  KB Home executive Scott Hansen stands in front of the Durango model home. Photographer: Kyle Grillot Some residents will have another option if the power goes out: using their car to charge their house. Ten homes across both developments will come with bi-directional chargers that can transfer electricity from an EV battery to the house, and those homeowners will be able to lease Kia EV6 crossovers from South Korea that have bi-directional batteries. Kia’s US EV6 models have battery capacities ranging from 58 kilowatt-hours to 77.4 kilowatt-hours — enough to keep a home powered for hours or even days. “In California, when it's really hot and there are fires, you're threatened with the power turning off,” says Dan Bridleman, senior vice president for sustainability, technology and strategic sourcing at KB Home. “We felt like there was probably an affordable way to build resiliency, not only at the house level but also into the community.” Read and share a full version of this story on the web. Like getting the Green Daily? Subscribe to Bloomberg.com for unlimited access to breaking news on climate and energy, data-driven reporting and graphics and Bloomberg Green magazine. At COP27 this week, representatives from nine countries sat down to dinner. This was no panel discussion or policy debate — the meal, co-hosted by the government of Singapore, was instead a celebration of the main dish: chicken grown from animal cells in a bioreactor. Singapore is currently the only place in the world that permits the commercial sale of cultivated protein, also known as lab-grown meat, cultured meat or cell-based meat. But as climate change threatens global food supplies, the country is leading a charge to get others on board.  Cultivated fish fingers by Bluu Seafood. On the latest episode of Zero, Akshat Rathi is joined by Lewis Pugh, an endurance swimmer who has completed a long-distance swim in every ocean in the world. “I’ve specialized over the past 15 years in undertaking swims in the most threatened environments, with a very, very simple message,” Pugh says. “Here’s a person swimming across the North Pole, swimming across an open patch of sea that should be frozen over. What is this saying about the health of our planet?” Listen to the episode — and subscribe to Zero on Apple, Spotify or Google.  The Lewis Pugh Foundation | 
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