Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zero energy ready homes are coming

energy.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 454 posts

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#141

Post by danans »

xthrown1 wrote: post #124
danans wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. What if this was done this brownfield development in areas with existing infrastructure? New development doesn't need to be coupled with sprawl. There is a significant amount of multifamily development that looks exactly like that. The IRA also included large incentives for the retrofit of the existing housing stoc…

[flagged]

> We should be sunsetting suburbs, not expanding them.

You missed a very good option in between: incrementally densify them, which also has the effect of increasing the tax revenue per unit of infrastructure.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#142

Post by nebulousthree »

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…

It's a culture problem. Suburb dwellers, at best, are indifferent towards their neighbours.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#143

Post by roywiggins »

johnweldon wrote: post #140
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…

Generally speaking, people will always choose to spend money living as close to their ideal as they can, with the resources they are able to give toward it. The fact that so many people choose to live in suburbs, or the "sticks", suggests that there is something desirable to _them_ about living there. I.e. the same spending power required to live in a house in the suburbs, or rurally, could usually be used to live in…

Ponzi's are very attractive too, for a while. People get a lot out of Ponzis.

"the revenue collected over time does not come near to covering the costs of meeting these long-term obligations. Development spread out over a broad area is very expensive to maintain. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability... Decades into this experiment, American cities have a ticking time bomb of unfunded liability for infrastructure maintenance. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates deferred maintenance at multiple trillions of dollars, but that's just for major infrastructure, not the local streets, curbs, walks, and pipes that directly serve our homes. Every mature city has a backlog of deferred maintenance, a growing list of promises with no discernible path to make good on them."

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt...

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#144

Post by johnweldon »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #137
kitsunesoba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert in this field, but I think that changing zoning in current suburbs to mixed use would go a long way towards fixing them. The central wards of Tokyo are surrounded by such mixed use residential areas and it works extremely well, with most necessities being within walking distance or at worst biking distance. It wouldn't fix the suburbs' lack of density, but it'd still be a marked improvement. It'd theore…

If you can find a way to convince Americans they don't all need a yard that can easily fit 6 (japanese) houses, we'll be well on our way.

Why do we need to convince someone they don't "need" anything? Each person has the best information about their own situation to decide what they need (or even want - you don't have to _need_ something to have to justify _wanting_ it)

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#145

Post by [deleted] »

louwrentius wrote: post #123
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…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#146

Post by taude »

nebulousthree wrote: post #142
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…

It's a culture problem. Suburb dwellers, at best, are indifferent towards their neighbours.

As someone who lives in a city, I see it being no different for neighbors who share the same front door.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#147

Post by xthrown1 »

prottog wrote: post #135
xthrown1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let them pay the $20,000 in rates they will without subsidies from the inner core. The free market will sort it out in short order.

> without subsidies from the inner core Like how the residents of New York City are able to get the food and water it needs all produced within the five boroughs? Or is that a different kind of "subsidy" from the hinterlands.

A subsidy means you pay less for something than you would on the open market. Cities not only pay the market price for all those products the majority of their taxes go out to the hinterlands on top of that.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#148

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Syonyk wrote: post #28

When you've confused "per kWh cost" with "energy to the house delivery costs," this sort of stuff sounds good on paper, but it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem that in the winter, homes use a lot more energy than they can generate, and in the spring/fall, they will generate a lot more energy than they need. I've got a large ground mount solar install I put in a few years ago (15.9kW nameplate, though mostly ea…

As someone with a smaller scale version of the "problem" you describe (3x overproduction from our ground-mount 6.7kW array in summer, 1/3x production in winter given air source heat pumps), I'd say this is where, even with this amazing contemporary technology, we need to get back to ... insulation.

As others have noted, passivhaus standards would help fix the "in the winter, homes use a lot more energy than they can generate" part of this. I've read of homes in Scandanavia that are heated by their inhabitants plus the output equivalent of a few candles. Not totally convinced by these stories, but they point the way: once you've got the carbon-reduced/free energy supply in place, work on massively (if possible) reducing how much of it you need.

We have an old adobe in the high desert, and it is so far from passivhaus as to be a joke. I'm fairly sure that if this was built to passivhaus standards, even our currently undersized array could handle the heating needs.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#149

Post by lotsofpulp »

jjav wrote: post #128
xputer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Suburban developments in the US are often in food deserts. There's usually nothing within walking distance and if there is it is prohibitively dangerous and unpleasant to walk there. Is there data to back this up, particularly the "usually" part? Having nearly always lived in suburban areas (a few times rural), food shopping is nearly always within an easy walk. I'm sure there are some cases where this might not be…

If you have to cross a 40ft+ road with vehicles traveling at 50mph (i.e. 40mph speed limit), I consider that not walkable.

And 5 lane 40mph arterial roads (two each way and 1 turn lane), seems to be a standard feature of all suburbs all around the country, on which most grocery stores and shopping are located.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#150

Post by roywiggins »

prottog wrote: post #135
xthrown1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let them pay the $20,000 in rates they will without subsidies from the inner core. The free market will sort it out in short order.

> without subsidies from the inner core Like how the residents of New York City are able to get the food and water it needs all produced within the five boroughs? Or is that a different kind of "subsidy" from the hinterlands.

Are the hinterlands selling food to cities below cost? Probably not. It's not a subsidy.
Post reply on HN