"Net-Zero Energy Buildings" is a classic Straw Man. Virtually ZERO meaning and ZERO relevance. Yeah, so you take an Energy Efficient home - very nice - add a bunch of Solar Panels and subtract Energy Usage of the Home from the Energy supplied to the Grid. Brilliant. How about a building with a Wind Turbine? How about a building with a Wind Turbine 100 yds away? Or one with a big mother Wind Turbine on the property producing 100x the total energy consumed by the home & barn & outhouse all constructed with 2x4 walls and zero insulation - are they now "net energy zero" homes. A net energy zero outhouse? How about someone who owns a small hydro plant supplying 10X the energy their home(s) consume - do they get to declare my home is "net-zero energy"? Why can't I get to declare my home "net-zero energy" because I supply clean, green energy to the Grid, working at a Hydro plant? And is that Net-zero Energy on a cold year with little sunshine? Or just on a good warm year with lot's of sun? And if I buy shares in a Nuclear Power plant that produces clean, green energy year round, more than my home consumes do I get to declare my home is "net-energy zero". "Net-energy zero" - another NUTTY Greenie catchphrase that in reality is just an embellishment to hide the INCREDIBLY bad economics of Solar Power. I've repeatedly shown how bad the economics of Solar power are, so new Greenie idea, just combine it with building efficiency in a hope to bury the terrible economics. A huge subsidy for the rich to buy expensive homes while the poor & middle class can't even afford a shack to live in. How about instead use that subsidy money for a good, basic home for the poor and middle class, with good insulation - like R18, instead of R12, a very tight envelope, double pane windows with southern exposure (in the north), heat exchanger on furnace and air exchange, maybe-maybe Solar Hot water in a good location, and minimum cost construction. Screw the wacky, hyper-expensive Solar Power SCAM & Super-duper extreme Energy Efficiency. What is the marginal cost of Hyper-Super-Duper Energy Efficiency vs just a good basic level of Energy Efficiency? $10k-$40k/kwth avg heat energy savings, I bet. When Nuclear Energy is $0.7 to $2k per kwth avg heat energy. Get 5-60X the Energy Savings by just installing Nuclear Power plants.
Well the point of zero energy homes is to utilize all of the energy saving mechanisms. This includes the cheaper window and wall insulation, shapes/designs that maximize/minimize heat from sun where appropriate, LED lights, energy efficient appliances, along with more expensive options like geothermal heating/cooling and solar panels in large quantity. To set a standard for future constructions is to hopefully create a future population that can use less energy while maintaining a developed quality of life, especially in a growing and developing population.
No that's the point of energy efficient housing, something that's been around a long time. Additionally you may incorporate passive solar heating or solar hot water in appropriate areas to have minimal but definitely not zero energy consumption. Zero energy homes is this nutty greenie fanatic concept that you add solar panels or wind turbines to return to the power grid whatever total quantity of energy consumed by the home over some time period. So you can build a tin shack, no insulation, no energy efficiency, but put a big honking wind turbine beside it , connect to grid and claim: "Wow, I have a zero energy home, woopedy-f'in doo". So why not if you live in a town with a NPP, produces more energy than all the homes consume, with zero emissions, then you could claim all homes are zero energy homes, thanks to the nuclear reactor? Really zero energy homes is a stupid concept. And truth be told they are not zero-energy by rational criteria because they don't count the energy inputs of the materials and they pretend the grid is a giant free battery bank, that they ignore. In fact the home is largely running off of grid electricity, coal, gas, nuclear, because the solar or wind is mostly missing in action.
Not sure where to start...some of your points are valid but you misunderstand a great deal about this building and zero energy construction in general. Of course you can add PV to any structure and make it zero energy but the idea is to deliver a ZE building for the lowest possible cost. DES uses less than 25% of the energy of a typical elementary school but in many cases it made more sense to pay for additional PV than to pay for more premium features such as triple paned glazing or R40 roof due to diminishing returns. The solar on this building will pay for itself and then some over it's lifetime with ZERO subsidies (unlike the entire fossil fuel industry). APS does not pay taxes so this system did not qualify for any incentives. Solar and wind are now the cheapest way to generate electricity in many regions until grid saturation is reached. Give it a few more years for batteries to improve and then even solar/wind+batteries will be far cheaper than any fossil fuel alternative (even with the FF subsidies). Nuclear is great...except for the waste....and the occasional meltdown....and the incredibly high construction costs but overall much better than FF. It doesn't have a chance against renewables though. Not many utilities are interested in a complicated 10yr multi-billion $ project given other options now available.
now that is the school that I went to in 4th and 5th grade! now I am in 7th
I did something very similar, new plans from Avasva helped me with this.
"Net-Zero Energy Buildings" is a classic Straw Man. Virtually ZERO meaning and ZERO relevance. Yeah, so you take an Energy Efficient home - very nice - add a bunch of Solar Panels and subtract Energy Usage of the Home from the Energy supplied to the Grid. Brilliant. How about a building with a Wind Turbine? How about a building with a Wind Turbine 100 yds away? Or one with a big mother Wind Turbine on the property producing 100x the total energy consumed by the home & barn & outhouse all constructed with 2x4 walls and zero insulation - are they now "net energy zero" homes. A net energy zero outhouse? How about someone who owns a small hydro plant supplying 10X the energy their home(s) consume - do they get to declare my home is "net-zero energy"? Why can't I get to declare my home "net-zero energy" because I supply clean, green energy to the Grid, working at a Hydro plant?
And is that Net-zero Energy on a cold year with little sunshine? Or just on a good warm year with lot's of sun? And if I buy shares in a Nuclear Power plant that produces clean, green energy year round, more than my home consumes do I get to declare my home is "net-energy zero".
"Net-energy zero" - another NUTTY Greenie catchphrase that in reality is just an embellishment to hide the INCREDIBLY bad economics of Solar Power. I've repeatedly shown how bad the economics of Solar power are, so new Greenie idea, just combine it with building efficiency in a hope to bury the terrible economics. A huge subsidy for the rich to buy expensive homes while the poor & middle class can't even afford a shack to live in.
How about instead use that subsidy money for a good, basic home for the poor and middle class, with good insulation - like R18, instead of R12, a very tight envelope, double pane windows with southern exposure (in the north), heat exchanger on furnace and air exchange, maybe-maybe Solar Hot water in a good location, and minimum cost construction. Screw the wacky, hyper-expensive Solar Power SCAM & Super-duper extreme Energy Efficiency. What is the marginal cost of Hyper-Super-Duper Energy Efficiency vs just a good basic level of Energy Efficiency? $10k-$40k/kwth avg heat energy savings, I bet. When Nuclear Energy is $0.7 to $2k per kwth avg heat energy. Get 5-60X the Energy Savings by just installing Nuclear Power plants.
Well the point of zero energy homes is to utilize all of the energy saving mechanisms. This includes the cheaper window and wall insulation, shapes/designs that maximize/minimize heat from sun where appropriate, LED lights, energy efficient appliances, along with more expensive options like geothermal heating/cooling and solar panels in large quantity. To set a standard for future constructions is to hopefully create a future population that can use less energy while maintaining a developed quality of life, especially in a growing and developing population.
No that's the point of energy efficient housing, something that's been around a long time. Additionally you may incorporate passive solar heating or solar hot water in appropriate areas to have minimal but definitely not zero energy consumption. Zero energy homes is this nutty greenie fanatic concept that you add solar panels or wind turbines to return to the power grid whatever total quantity of energy consumed by the home over some time period. So you can build a tin shack, no insulation, no energy efficiency, but put a big honking wind turbine beside it , connect to grid and claim: "Wow, I have a zero energy home, woopedy-f'in doo".
So why not if you live in a town with a NPP, produces more energy than all the homes consume, with zero emissions, then you could claim all homes are zero energy homes, thanks to the nuclear reactor? Really zero energy homes is a stupid concept. And truth be told they are not zero-energy by rational criteria because they don't count the energy inputs of the materials and they pretend the grid is a giant free battery bank, that they ignore. In fact the home is largely running off of grid electricity, coal, gas, nuclear, because the solar or wind is mostly missing in action.
Not sure where to start...some of your points are valid but you misunderstand a great deal about this building and zero energy construction in general. Of course you can add PV to any structure and make it zero energy but the idea is to deliver a ZE building for the lowest possible cost. DES uses less than 25% of the energy of a typical elementary school but in many cases it made more sense to pay for additional PV than to pay for more premium features such as triple paned glazing or R40 roof due to diminishing returns.
The solar on this building will pay for itself and then some over it's lifetime with ZERO subsidies (unlike the entire fossil fuel industry). APS does not pay taxes so this system did not qualify for any incentives.
Solar and wind are now the cheapest way to generate electricity in many regions until grid saturation is reached. Give it a few more years for batteries to improve and then even solar/wind+batteries will be far cheaper than any fossil fuel alternative (even with the FF subsidies). Nuclear is great...except for the waste....and the occasional meltdown....and the incredibly high construction costs but overall much better than FF. It doesn't have a chance against renewables though. Not many utilities are interested in a complicated 10yr multi-billion $ project given other options now available.