Net-Zero House: How Jeff Hohensee's Home Creates More Energy Than It Uses (VIDEO)

Net-zero homes are houses that break even when it comes to energy consumption, or in the case of Jeff Hohensee's Colorado home, actually produce energy to put back into the grid.

In this video from CNN, Hohensee likens most American's homes to being about as equivalent as a Hummer. "They're just big, huge energy sucks that waste a lot of energy," he says.

So how did Hohensee manage to cut his home's energy usage by 80%? He says that it began with simple steps: getting out the caulk gun and sealing up all the air leaks in the home. From there, he insulated the attic, installed new doors, windows and appliances, and made some lifestyle changes, such as hanging out clothes to dry rather than using an electric dryer.

To produce the electricity and hot water that is needed, the home is equipped with a roof covered in solar panels, which Hohensee jokes is "a lot more sexy than insulation." After making use of government incentives and rebates, Hohensee says he spent around $50,000, and hopes to break even on that investment in eight years.

WATCH:

Comments

[Ed Lukacs]

09:20 AM on 10/08/2010

Frankly, we can build totally independent housesw which have no need of the power grid, yet allow one to live in modern comfort. Why are we still building cheap boxes? Mainly because most builders make more money on cheap frills than they would on robust and enetrgy efficient construction. It doesn't help that Homer and Marge want a house that looks just like their last one.

Bravo to those who are finally designing houses for sustainable living!!!

[bannorhill]

07:23 PM on 10/07/2010

Another example of how millions in government grants and research for 30 years still can not produce economically sensable energy.

[lilpeg]

08:37 AM on 10/07/2010

$50K is a lot of money!!!! It would be nice if power companies went back to offering low interest loans for energy efficiency up-grades on older homes....for things like caulking and insulation, windows and efficient heating and cooling units. These things are available and affordable right now. They could also offer advice about how to buy the best products and do some construction/installation oversight. Some areas have had this in the past. We took advantage and did a great job on an older house that we owned in another state. Where we are now, nothing is available.

[Minolta]

02:07 AM on 10/07/2010

How do you get even on a 50 thousand dollar investment in 8 years? Just how much energy does this guy use? how in the world can he use $6,250 dollars of energy a year in his house? I'm sorry folks but the math just doesn't add up. And if you toss in all the money we tax payers had to borrow from China to subsidize him.....the pay off is a heck of a lot longer than "8 years".

They used to say the average homeowner moves every 5 years. If he's average, he will never get his money back before he moves. Lets not fool ourselves folks with over optimistic numbers. Solar energy is still MORE EXPENSIVE than conventional energy to the consumer.

This guy may save the planet but he's not saving his wallet.

[rikilii]

09:15 PM on 10/07/2010

One of the reasons conventional energy is less expensive is that we are not currently playing all the "costs" associated with using it.  We're borrowing from our children's future to pay for it now.

[BlackbirdHighway]

12:16 PM on 10/08/2010

"And if you toss in all the money we tax payers had to borrow from China to subsidize him..."

Actually, the fossil fuels industries get 10 times as much government subsidy money as alternative energy. So, really we are borrowing 10 times more money from China in order to keep people using coal and oil.

[GoodRead]

11:08 PM on 10/06/2010

My wife and I looked into building an off-grid house about 6 years ago in San Diego County. We could not get a construction permit for the design - had to be connected to SDG&E. No lender would provide construction financing or later, a mortgage - had to be connected to the grid for resale purposes. And, no one would insure it, at least at reasonabl rates because again, it had to be connected to the grid.

Also in CA, if I'm not mistaken, the laws on the books prevent homeowners from putting in a system that generate too much electricity to feed back to the grid they force you to connect to.

Yes, we have net metering but we do not get cash for excess electrical generation, only credits against what the law forces you to buy. So, there is no money to be made, just saved and, with a substantial upfront cost.

That guy in the video - if he is right, all he did was prepay his electric bill for 8 years. $50,000 over 8 years is $520 per month - that is a huge average monthly electric bill!

That $50k, it would double to $100k if invested properly over his highly questionable 8 year period. Prepayment just does not make economic sense - not until the laws change that let homeowners participate in passive, disrtributed power generation and actually make money doing it.

My comments are based on economics, not environmental benefits - that's a whole

[Genders]

08:45 PM on 10/06/2010

Solar panels are now available for about 1$ per watt peak. For millions of Americans, rooftop pv solar is cheaper than the utility. Look it up folks, that might include you.

[Kevin Atlanta]

07:58 PM on 10/06/2010

Let's get someone manufacturing a reasonable cost shingle that's photo-voltaic.  I saw a piece on them once a while back but they are amazingly gone now.

[Genders]

08:47 PM on 10/06/2010

They are available, but standard panels are already about 1$ per Wpeak: cheaper than the utility for many people.

[Tommygun264]

10:32 PM on 10/06/2010

The secret lies in micro-thin, flexible photo-voltaic film that can be molded and laminated to any shape, or even sewn onto fabric. You may have seen hats and backpacks with pv cells on them - that is the same material they are using on interlocking roof shingles. We have the technology TODAY. If we diverted the more than $4 BILLION in direct federal subsidies and billions more in federal, state, county & city tax credits that are given to the oil & coal industries every year to keep their 19th century technology integrated with our national fuel & energy infrastructure to the development & integration of clean, renewable sources of energy, the transition would be a lot smoother. But everyone who dares to cut into the obscene profits of the oil & coal industries is immediately denounced as some kind of evil con artist. Apparently, billions in retail profits & corporate welfare for the status quo, most profitable transnational corporations in the history of the planet is all-American, but profitable green technology is a Communist plot.

[lightningbolt]

03:46 PM on 10/06/2010

Clean renewable energy can power the entire world indefinitely, cleanly and profitably.  All other sources of energy will run out and leave the planet in ruins.

[myth buster]

08:05 PM on 10/06/2010

Eventually, we'll run out of rare-earths to mine. There is, however, a way to make more- nuclear power. A nuclear plant isn't just a power plant; it's an alchemy factory.

[BlackbirdHighway]

12:21 PM on 10/08/2010

Solar cells are made from silicon. Silicon is neither a rare earth nor is it rare. It makes up 25% of the Earth's crust, making it an extremely abundant element.

[Merrimack]

02:25 PM on 10/06/2010

Solar does nothing to decrease the investment in oil, gas, coal or nuke powered infrastructure. Even if every home in Florida had solar panels the underlying infrastructure would not decrease as the our grid must have the capacity to provide 99.999% up time in the rain, tropical storms or when the sun doesn't shine. The grid must be built for that single biggest power hour in the year. Five 9s is 5 minutes of down time in 365 days. Until solar can be stored it will never replace needed capacity in our legacy systems.

Secondly, the general consumer will never accept an 8 year ROI on a large scale. The folks that can afford to spend $50k are your largest power users and saving $500/month isn't going to grab their attention especially when you want to put something that ugly on their million dollar home. There is a reason people spend $30k on their barrel tile roofs here in Florida; they are nice to look at and I am not letting you put a bunch of nasty looking panels on my roof.

My parents put solar in for our water heater when I was a kid and it didn't lower our bill one bit as we worked or schooled in the day and washed and did laundry at night. Complete waste of money.
Government should put solar allocated money toward more Nukes.

[jsarets]

03:09 PM on 10/06/2010

[jsarets]

03:10 PM on 10/06/2010

[Heauxbeaux]

05:44 PM on 10/06/2010

Yeah, it left me speechless too ;-)

[doxienan]

03:43 PM on 10/06/2010

I just met a family last week who spent more than $30,000 on solar PV and hot water and they're thrilled with their investment. The hot water works at night since it's stored in a huge tank. They have a back-up wood stove and they rarely use oil. And it's in northern New England!

[Merrimack]

09:55 AM on 10/07/2010

Your friends must like cold showers in the morning. B/c the only way we had hot water after 5 loads of laundry and 1 load of dishes and 4 people took a shower;even with a 100 gallon tank is to keep the FPL powered override stay on. Now you just defeated the whole purpose of the solar b/c we emptied the 100 gallons of solar heated water and at midnight the tank is being heated on my dime. Day rolls around and you have the big pot of heated water off the normal grid with a $4,000 heating system heating already heated water that no one uses since no one is home.

[doxienan]

02:17 PM on 10/06/2010

Impressive. It's sad that the building technology and materials are available but inefficient homes still being built around the country. Wouldn't a home buyer prefer to spend a little bit more up front to save money every month on their energy bills?

[PlayTOE]

01:55 PM on 10/06/2010

It can be done
There is no reason that a net zero standard cannot be placed into the building code and builders be encouraged to meet this.

[doxienan]

02:18 PM on 10/06/2010

Right - but will the building industry fight it? It needs some clever marketing strategy so homebuyers see the enormous benefits of owning a zero energy home.

[lightningbolt]

03:45 PM on 10/06/2010

I don't think the building industry cares.  They'll make more money because installing solar panels requires additional construction work in some cases.  It is the fossil fuel industry that will object.

[PlayTOE]

05:54 PM on 10/06/2010

If the standards are put into place then there will be a demand and this will be filled by builders catering to the market.

When Canada brought in the R2000 standards, then houses meeting that standard needed a higher quality of insulation and \weatherproofing and were far more comfortable to live in as well as being cheaper to heat. The demand soon made these houses a popular choice.

Having a standard meant the consumer could compare equally built homes and were not fooled by pretend upgrades, and it also provided an achievable target for builders.

[sheila]

12:48 PM on 10/06/2010

One more person showing us what is possible, even when the Big Enviros, Big Energy and our legislators have no faith in us. All of them have been blocking the simple policy tool that has created entire NET PRODUCTION CITIES in Germany, the Feed In Tariff.

Simply stated, you feed all your power production into the grid and receive a premium payment for it - that means that YOU get a return on investment and your neighbors pay far less than it would cost to buy the power from a Big Solar plant in our wilderness plus new transmission plus Big Profits for Big Energy.

Instead, here in the US, we have Chevron and BP Solar killing off tens of thousands of acres of healthy desert ecosystem (public land) - using 85% taxpayer money - so they can monopolize sunshine and charge us a FORTUNE for it. That's stupid and wasteful!

In CO, a lot of the energy load is for heat, in other places, it's for cooling - by just building better structures, especially passive designed, we could eliminate almost ALL of those energy vampires, but building right is neither incentivized nor required here, so builders cheap out and we pay and pay and pay to live in their shoddy structures. Big Developers and Big Energy both win. You look at who donates the most to political campaigns and whoa! Big Developers and Big Energy show up at the top!

WE need to be the force for change here

[she343]

01:27 PM on 11/13/2010

you are going to need big installations for business use--but you are correct that they want to go big so they can keep selling to you every month forever..ng big gov. and big busi.......

where are those rugged independent teas with this one -getting big gov. and big bus. out of our lives as much as possible?

[sc300nc]

09:31 AM on 10/06/2010

Sure, for only $50,000 with the "hope" of breaking even in 8 years, everyone can do the same.

How much did us taxpayers pay for his little experiment?

[DorianCorso]

10:26 AM on 10/06/2010

Less than we pay to subsidize one big oil company for 2.37 hours.

Way less than the 4.3 billion and counting we spent to look for WMD's that DID NOT EXIST.

[Organic-Guy]

10:48 AM on 10/06/2010

Thank you Dorian. Really sick of these right wing hacks who shoot off there mouths and don't have a clue what they're talking about.

[Suzanne Crockett-Jones]

11:06 AM on 10/06/2010

Or consider the cost of cleaning up oil spills, or the superfund for toxic site cleanup. But it is hard to tell the 'something for nothing' crowd that spending $5 now will save them $100 later. They want that $5 in their pocket! It's called the Ethos of Greed, and the rich model it to the middle/working class, who shoot themselves in the foot.

[TokyoStormWarning]

10:59 AM on 10/06/2010

I can't believe you found something negative in this story.

[aligatorhardt]

09:27 AM on 10/06/2010

Another success story for solar energy. Anyone who has solar is very happy with the investment. those that say it is too expensive obviously are talking through their hats. The Solar power industry grew 85% in 2008 and 51% in 2009. Even with the recession, very few industries can show that level of success. Prices for components have fallen 30% in the last 3 years and continued improvements show additional savings. The systems are expected to have a lifetime of about 25 years. The panels are 90% recyclable when finished or broken. for true information and views of other renewable energy solutions visit www.renewableenergyworld.com

[sc300nc]

09:33 AM on 10/06/2010

Then it shoudn't need any taxpayer subsidies then should it?

[Maverickpower]

10:49 AM on 10/06/2010

WHy should oil and coal ????

[Organic-Guy]

10:52 AM on 10/06/2010

Better those small investments than the billions we pour into oil, coal and nuclear that never will pay a dividend and cost us trillions in wars and environmental clean up. People like you who harp like this are just irrational know nothings. Please think critically before you try and engage in a conversation.

[HLL]

10:17 AM on 10/06/2010

Thanks for the info, alligator. I can't wait to buy a house one day and have it be a solar house. A dream that I hope will come true. Longtime fan, so fav'd ;-) ☮