Betting on the sun: Thin rooftop panels help a Miami Beach house produce its own power

Flexible, thin film solar panels offer increased efficiency, better hurricane resistance and can be installed like conventional roofing materials.

BY GEORGIA TASKER

gtasker@miamiherald.com

With South Florida already setting summer heat records, power bills may set even higher records this summer. But Ken Fields, who lives in a three-bedroom, three-bath house on Miami Beach, has just installed a roof-top photovoltaic system and is dramatically reducing his energy consumption in a first step to going off the grid.

''If you have the ability to do it, you should do it,'' he said. ''As far as the building department knows, I'm the only person'' to get a permit for solar power in Miami Beach.

Fields' system is not the usual set of glass-covered rooftop panels. The photovoltaics have been compressed into a thin membrane that is flexible enough to roll up — or unroll in long sheets across his roof.

To cool his 2,800-square-foot home, his average electric bill has been almost $700 a month because ``I like it cold. I'm a New England boy; I like the thermostat set at 65 degrees.''

A real estate investor and owner of Uruguay Steaks — an online purveyor of steaks from grass-fed cattle on his 1,400-acre ranch — Fields has been in Florida six years. He moved from New York City to own and operate The Creek hotel on the Beach. When he sold that, he bought the land in Uruguay.

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