It's actually a cream-colored stucco house, but it is indeed a "green" house. About 50 yards from the Delaware River, and directly across from the Salem, NJ Nuclear Power Plant's menacing reactor tower, Liz Gowen's Middletown, Delaware home is doing its part to help the planet.
On the inside? Earth-friendly bamboo floors. She also has energy-star appliances and a tankless hot water heater so she only heats the water she needs. Traditional water heaters heat water 24/7, which drives up your power bill and requires more power from the grid.
On the outside of the house, Liz has a compost pile, a prius in the driveway, and most impressive of all, she has a roof full of solar panels. They cost her roughly 22 thousand dollars, which is actually half the cost. Delmarva Power paid the other half of the cost. The power company makes money selling power, but they need folks like Liz to essentially "store" power for them and send it back into the grid when they need it.
Liz' power bill is actually about 10 bucks a month now, and in June, she actually came out ahead- the power company paid her a few bucks for the power she sent back to the grid.
So you can see for yourself, if you spend a little green to help keep the planet green, it might end up saving you some green down the road.
