In a typical Florida house, air-conditioning accounts for about 35% of all the electricity the home uses. As the largest single source of energy consumption in Florida, a home's air-conditioning load represents the biggest energy challenge facing Florida residents. The Florida Solar Energy Center designed a project to meet this challenge. Two homes were built with the same floor plan on near-by lots. The difference was that one (the control home) conformed to local residential building practices, and the other (the Zero Energy home) was designed with energy efficiency in mind and a solar technology system on the roof. The homes were then monitored carefully for energy use. The projects designers were looked to answer two questions: (1) could a home in a climate such as central Florida be engineered and built so efficiently that a relatively small PV system would serve the majority of its cooling needs--and even some of its daytime electrical needs; and (2) would that home be as comfortable and appealing as the conventional model built alongside it? The answer was yes, even though it was conducted in the summer of 1998--one of the hottest summers on record in Florida.