Zero Net Energy Homes at Sage Green

Not just some of these will reach zero. Course-of-construction testing demonstrated performance capacities exceeding design, in some cases by as much as 30%. All of these homes will be net-generators under design occupancy. Purchase will generate a $10,500 federal income tax credit for the buyer, for net cost under $250K, fee-simple, fully-equipped. Thanks Preston.

Kudos to Preston Koerner for bringing this development to light. This is a bug that needs to be catching – with all the new construction that took place over the last decade, and such a low percentage of it being zero net energy design, I hope this get’s the national media attention it deserves.

The wise design of these homes shows the excellent benefit of small application PV efficient design and components, and they’re beautiful inside as well. I’m sure we’ll see much more of this in the future.

However, I’ve seen evidence of significant challenges, both resource-based and process-based, to scaling PV up to satisfy even a majority of national electricity demand on the kind of time scale we really need.

In my estimation, solar thermal with molten salt for energy storage is the answer to replace the current 2,776 conventional plants across the country (most of which burn coal, natural gas and/or fuel oil). A string of 100 solar thermal/molten salt generation plants across our sunbelt, each 10.5 miles on a side, could supply all the current power demands of the entire nation 24x7x365 via high voltage transmission lines.

Here’s more on the technology if you’re interested:

http://2greenenergy.com/solar-thermal-leader/2534/
http://2greenenergy.com/utility-scale/2499/

Google just completed work on a prototype mirror technology that could bring the energy cost down to 5 cents per kWh. Here’s a link on that:

http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/3090-google-develops-new-solar-thermal-mirror-prototype

There’s no science-based or resource-based barrier to the massive deployment of this technology, and it can be rapidly scaled up to meet additional demands of an all-electric transportation and shipping grid as well. Many factors are building behind EV’s and I think we’re approaching a sea change in the public mindset on internal combustion similar to what we saw with fur clothing. Here’s a little more on my reasoning:

http://2greenenergy.com/electric-vehicle-adoption/2890/
http://2greenenergy.com/epa/3003/
http://2greenenergy.com/paradigm-shift/2668/

In any case, both PV and solar thermal tap the one utterly clean energy source that is completely stable and predictable year round and year on year, and it’ll be plentiful for another five billion years.

Bravo Jetson Green for a great bit of news, and for opening up a forum for public discourse and information exchange – sites like this are the some of the reasons I still have hope for the future.

Craig Shields, Editor, 2GreenEnergy.com