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Zero energy ready homes are coming

energy.gov

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Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#111

Post by loeg »

askvictor wrote: post #107
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill. Look, I hate Single Family Housing as much as anyone - but roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes. If the people in the sticks are buying a lot of gas, they're paying a lot more taxes for the roads, too. It'd be nice if property t…

> roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes. Do you have any sources for that? I'm in Australia, where fuel costs about twice what it does in the US. A decent portion of that is taxes/duties, but road spending is taken from consolidated revenue, and fuel taxes ultimately contribute a minority of the spending on roads. So unless the cost of fuel…

GP is likely talking about US federal gas taxes -> Highway Trust Fund -> Federal highway spending.

Notably, though, the HTF spends more than it earns in gas tax revenue; the shortfall comes from the general fund. And also Federal highway spending does not cover all highway spending; the rest comes from the states[1][3]. Federal highway spending also does not cover local roads at all.

[1]: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/images/full-reports/...

[2]: (Above image from https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57138 )

[3]: https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#112

Post by [deleted] »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99
xyst wrote: post #64

I just see this as another subsidy for single family housing developments. The home may be "zero energy ready" or whatever greenwashing term they want to use. But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back, driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors appointments). All of this is…

> This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill. Look, I hate Single Family Housing as much as anyone - but roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes. If the people in the sticks are buying a lot of gas, they're paying a lot more taxes for the roads, too. It'd be nice if property t…

[deleted]

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#113

Post by xputer »

IncRnd wrote: post #98
xyst wrote: post #64

I just see this as another subsidy for single family housing developments. The home may be "zero energy ready" or whatever greenwashing term they want to use. But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back, driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors appointments). All of this is…

> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill. That's not generally how this works. There aren't necessarily highways and new paved roads going to rural properties. Electrical service isn't only downtown in cities but for miles outside of them or from…

[flagged]

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#114

Post by xputer »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #99
xyst wrote: post #64

I just see this as another subsidy for single family housing developments. The home may be "zero energy ready" or whatever greenwashing term they want to use. But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back, driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors appointments). All of this is…

> This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill. Look, I hate Single Family Housing as much as anyone - but roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes. If the people in the sticks are buying a lot of gas, they're paying a lot more taxes for the roads, too. It'd be nice if property t…

Roads are absolutely not financed by gasoline taxes. They are massively subsidized by the federal government. Watch some videos about Strong Towns to learn about the problems that is causing in regions that are not experiencing constant growth.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN...

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#115

Post by loeg »

Syonyk wrote: post #70
eppp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been toying with the idea of buying used panels in bulk and doing the same, but the payoff just isnt there at the current battery price. What kind of frame did you install to mount the panels? I have tons of room for ground mount and would love to do it diy as soon as the costs line up.

My system is grid tie, because the local plans review process and I didn't see eye-to-eye on batteries. I have a solar power trailer for backup power. https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ documents the build. My frames are timber, though a neighbor built a very similar system with metal frames and 72 cell panels, and got his costs down quite a bit further - he's around $1/W installed, mine was somewhat higher at abo…

What do you use pipes for?

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#116

Post by Symbiote »

jonfw wrote: post #83
antisthenes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once use cases like yours become more common (e.g. 4MWh surplus), industries will adjust and buy surplus power from homeowners like you, and the nation as a whole will spend less time and effort on maintaining the grid and power plants that generate electricity. We will be able to run power-hungry industries (e.g. steel-aluminum/smelting) for very little cost. > And even with 5kW of solar hung for a ~100 sq ft shed,…

If we expect industry to take up the excess, than either 1. that industry will only operate according to the weather or 2. We'll still need some variable power generation that can be switched on when wind or solar isn't producing enough

A few industrial users can weather changes in supply, with notice of the expected price in advance.

The aluminium smelter can heat to x+250°, let things cool to x° while people cook their evening meal, then heat up again afterwards.

A large supermarket chain can set their refrigerators to 5°, but by allowing the range to move between 3° and 7° can save significant power. (One of the big British supermarkets already does this.)

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#117

Post by ajross »

Syonyk wrote: post #56
ajross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem that [...] Is that the "fundamental" problem being solved, though? Or is it just an externality that needs to be addressed? It seems like the "fundamental" problem here is trying to maximize deployment of renewable generation, and that construction like this is a great step in that direction. (Not the least of which because it pushes the investment required onto consumers…

> But that's not an argument against PV solar... It can certainly be an argument against residential rooftop solar. In general, "industrial solar" (ground mount, high voltage strings, single axis trackers) is sub-$1/W installed. Residential rooftop solar is still $2.50-$4/W depending on where you are, because it has quite a few additional requirements (per-panel rapid shutdown in NEC 2017, various other requirements…

> Low levels of penetration are easy to deal with, higher levels start to get really hard

Well, yeah. So pick the low hanging fruit and sell it to the FAANG hippies. I still fail to see the problem here. No one is promoting rooftop solar as a one-stop-shop trip to renewable utopia, just as a effective and immediately deployable generation mechanism in a regulatory environment not well-suited to agile and rapid solutions of any kind.

If we get to the point where the hippies are buying up all the panels and the grid solutions can't get them cheap enough, that's the time to start complaining. Not now.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#118

Post by Baeocystin »

paganel wrote: post #89

Crazy how the Americans try to create "zero energy homes" (whatever that means) using basically wood structures. Wood is a very, very bad heat insulator. The best proven heat insulator when it comes to building a home is earth itself, that's why for hundreds to thousands of years dug-out huts have been the norm on several continents, for different cultures/civilisations. Granted, you cannot build a macmansion-like ho…

Almost half of Americans live in an earthquake zone. Wood is a hell of a lot safer than masonry or rammed earth in such conditions.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#119

Post by IncRnd »

xputer wrote: post #113
IncRnd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill. That's not generally how this works. There aren't necessarily highways and new paved roads going to rural properties. Electrical service isn't only downtown in cities but for miles outside of them or from…

[flagged]

They certainly don't seem to be talking about suburban homes.

> But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back, driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors appointments).

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#120

Post by Someone »

Syonyk wrote: post #77
jrs235 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if instead of batteries you hooked up a boiler to heat water or a deep chest freezer to cool water and then used heat exchangers to heat or cool overnight when solar doesn't work? I'm assuming no one does this because batteries are likely cheaper than this type of setup.

You're welcome to do that, and it's something some off grid systems use, but the energy storage in that sort of thing is fairly poor. Go do the math on it, but you'll find a 55 gallon drum of water, from "room temperature" to "really darn hot" holds 15-20kWh of energy. It's useful, but not a staggeringly large amount for a typical house, that can easily use more than that on a single day's heating. Thermal mass stora…

> It's useful, but not a staggeringly large amount for a typical house, that can easily use more than that on a single day's heating.

This article isn’t talking about typical houses of today. The typical future house should be a lot better insulated.

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