What is a Zero Energy Home? A zero energy home is a self sustaining energy efficient home. A Zero Energy Home has two definitions. The first one is a Department of Energy definition and it basically says...
A Zero Energy Home has two definitions. The first one is a Department of Energy definition and it basically says that in this program, we are trying to get homes that do not have to be fed energy from outside the house - a house that produces as much energy as it consumes. They realized that to get to a true net zero, it was going to be a journey and so initially, they allowed you to call it a house if it produced a 50 percent reduction in utility usage. Last year they went to 60 percent. The house that I built was a true net zero energy home, so at the end of the year, you would have had some utility bills a couple of times during the year, but you would have had positive statements a couple of times during the year, too. At the end of the year, you would realize that you paid zero for your gas and electricity. So your house would be producing as much energy as it is using?
In this particular case, though, we are not storing the energy in batteries. There are some times when it actually uses more energy than it produces, and sometimes it produces more energy than it uses. It is connected to the grid, so when it overproduces power, we are actually selling that power back to the utility company. It is mostly done with photovoltaic cells from the roof of the house. We are converting sunlight to electricity. It is not really complicated. Basically, the sun is hitting some photovoltaic panels and it is actually creating a direct current. That direct current is not what our houses understand, so we have to convert that direct current to an alternating current and that is a fairly automatic thing that takes place. Then the alternating current is fed into the house. If the house needs, it uses it. If it does not need it, it goes to the meter and the meter actually runs backwards. When the meter man came out and turned on the meter the first day, it started running backwards. He had never seen anything like that before. It is pretty exciting to see.
