Wow good for that guy. I'm pretty sure he spent quite a bit on those solar panels, hopefully, he gets back his investment. Colrado is such a beautiful place.

Hy,my name is Mike,it is a good post,but i don't understand something,when is a cloudy day, to generate electricity the hydrogen is piped to an air-conditioner-sized fuel cell ??

Perhaps I am missing the point. 6000 gallons of heated water in storage tanks. He might not be able to keep selling excess electricity?

His setup is better than something that would be fully coal/nuclear powered, but still... Excess is excess in my book.

Kind of like the Tahoe vs. Tahoe Hybrid conundrum. AT LEAST it IS a hybrid...

I'd guess that the underground hot water storage is used as buffer heat storage: heat the water when the sun's out and heat the house from the water when the sun disappears for a few days/weeks.

There's a saying around here (in the Boulder area). The

"Boulderites are all about saving the whales until it affects their trust fund."

It's hard to congratulate our friend on his "green" house when it's probably 3-4 times as large and expensive as the average house in the country. Sure it's zero energy now, but will it ever pay back the energy investment it took to build it int he first place?

I imagine that the 6000 gallons of heated water is heated by solar energy. I think it acts as a thermal mass. He probably collects heat in the summer and uses it in the winter. And if he has vacuum insulated solar thermal heaters, he can probably gain some heat even in the winter. Gain it in the day, and use it throughout the night.

And I think that he buys and sells electricity from the grid. He buys it on cloudy days and sells it on sunny days. If there are enough sunny days, he makes a small (very small) profit, if there are more cloudy days, he pays a little.

But i'm just assuming, I didn't read the article. :P

i look at the facade and asky 5 types of windows on the second level? facade is not attractive. green is both efficient and beautiful. the house is lost amongst the panels.

What an idiot. This guy is an "eco builder" and yet he knew nothing about passive solar??!! Sounds like a failure of a project, from a conservation, planning and efficiency point of view...

He had to install a/c because the summer sun came in through south-facing windows, and his heating wasn't efficient enough so he added electric hvac. Which means he built a standard modern home with ZERO use of efficient building (oh south-facing, big whup, it didn't help much). ANY passive solar nut can see that you need wide overhangs to prevent summer heat in Colorado, and strong thermal mass for heating in the winter. So why not build the home with super insulation like strawbale or even foot-thick cement, for that necessary thermal mass? Add a thermal chimney and north-facing natural ventilation over a small pond and trees, for free a/c done clean, natural and smart.

Didn't this guy do ANY actual research before building?

Nice job!
@Sire... heat is easier to store than electricity, so keeping water heated is easy with the roof panels

Another MILLION dollar (almost) energy independent house. WOW!

That is one butt-ugly house for $1million! All those odd shaped windows dont help- and I doubt they would facilitate any cross-ventilation- which along with larger overhangs wouldve reduced if not completely eliminated the need for AC. He also swapped out his NG appliances for electric....yet you would assume these were brand new??

Dan Rossini: Not everything can be solved with wider overhangs. Consider this, the solar altitude is about the same in March and September. But September is much warmer because of the delay between high sun angles and ambient temperature. If you block out sun in late summer, you are also blocking out sun in the last part of the heating season (e.g. March).

I completely agree, however, that the article did not mention thermal mass or any passive cooling techniques. Some basic energy modelling would have been a good use for a fraction of the $1 million.

Also, I don't think the designer thought much about exploiting the low-hanging fruit first. PV should be a last resort after you have optimized glazing, thermal mass, insulation.

Chances are this guy's carbon footprint is many times larger than your average urban dweller due to difference in building materials and daily transportation.

Could that guy have a more smug look on his face? Any CO2 savings are offset by the huge smug cloud over his house.

Man, I love Treehugger. A guy builds a house that generates more electricity than it uses, and we yell that he built too big of a house and didn't make his walls out of strawbale.

I'm not gonna debate whether or not he will ever make back what it took to build this house. I'm not an expert there. But it seems to me, the fact that it is making back anything at all means that over the lifetime of this house, its gonna do alot better than any tiny shack thats lit by coal everyday for 30 years.

So props to Eric Doub. He must have spent a ton on all those PV cells. He's investing in further R&D I guess. :-P

It's not optimal but he's walking the walk.

re: Sandru Mihai - There's no hydrogen fuel cell involved. The water is used for collecting and storing heat. The PV panels are used for electricity. He had a natural gas heater but replaced with with an electric A/C with heater.

I have toured Solar Harvest. Some of the comments above are uninformed cheap shots about the home and the builder. Eric Doub cheerfully admits that he didn't get everything perfect in this home, but it works remarkably well. It makes substantial use of passive solar, and every aspect of construction was informed by building science. You can check out technical specifications and a wealth of other information at http://www.ecofuturesbuilding.com/taxonomy_menu/1/26

$987000 for an average house with a few upgrades resulting in an energy bill that balances out over a year.

For a showcase home (he is a builder ... and this is on the company tab) that doesn't strike me as a great deal; though with cold winters, balancing it all out is quite a feat.

Would have loved to read more details in the article: sq feet of the house, what they do to conserve daily energy use, details about the cost of certain installations, solar details, ...

"Didn't this guy do ANY actual research before building?"

Considering that the house looks like a turd with solar panels on it, I don't think design was high on the priority list.

Before you all are so quick to cast judgment, I would recommend you look at the Ecofutures website to learn the REAL facts about the house. The article did not go into the well-researched and well-executed details of building science included in this home simply because of time and space allowed. If you visit the website, you will see that the home has real-time energy monitoring systems in place to prove our concept. From this monitoring we've learned that 60-70% of the home's heat comes from passive solar gain - the radiant floor heat only kicked on 10 times this winter. Sure electric backup was necessary for DHW but this was a test home, we'll readily admit that we made the tank too big. Since then we've successfully implemented several large-tank solar thermal systems in zero energy homes.

I know this is the internet, and all of the posters here are likely subject to short attention spans and therefore did not do the necessary research to formulate a reasoned argument, but really folks, this is a bit harsh.

In the future, consider how much more useful your comments will be when they are thoughtful and constructive, rather than immature and rude.

Consider sending positive energy toward any green endeavor.. rather than polluting the environmental movement with negative energy.