Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The future of renewable energy is making it look cool”.
(, calm, music ), Remember the Jetsons. They had gadgets galore from holograms to a robotic maid, but they also probably had an astronomical electric bill as well as a massive carbon footprint.. That’S still an issue for our own home of the future, but, unlike the Jetsons, we’re actually using some of that cutting edge tech to solve it. ( light music ) As homeowners of the future, we’ll have more ability to monitor our energy consumption.. But before we get to that, let’s talk about where that energy’s coming from, because the home of the future will always need power.. We built our home to generate a lot of its own power from solar panels installed on the carport roof.. In fact, the solar panels are the carport roof., It’s an integral part of their house architecturally, and that was part of the design of the house from the beginning. [ Grant ] Stan Pipkin is the owner of Lighthouse Solar here in Austin, which specializes in integrated solar Design. [ Stan ] When Carter put up panels on the white house, ( laughter ), nobody liked’em, because they were big, they were bulky, they stood out., But these are something entirely different.
[ Stan ]. This gives architects something to go: wild with., (, upbeat music, ) [ Grant ]. If you look around Austin, this is very different than most solar retrofits that have the panels tacked onto the roof.. Our solar installation is deliberately and artfully designed made to feel like a natural, essential part of the house itself..
I think the whole industry understands it’s silly to sorta slap solar on top of the building.. Why not make the building electricity generating itself [ Grant ]? This is Katharine Beisner, an expert in solar technology. People are definitely trying to make the solar panels better, looking., It’s still by and large, in residential, putting solar on top of a roof.. Now a lot of them look like just gorgeous black flat screen TVs and it’s very low-profile. And I suspect, we’ll see a lot of these products in the future. ( upbeat music, ) [ Grant ] Here’s how the system actually works. Each one of those squares individually Is a solar cell.? They produce collectively DC power that flows to the inverter. And then it’s changed to AC power and that’s what the house can run on.
And any energy not used by the house flows into a lithium ion battery.. So let’s say a homeowner installs solar. Does that make them impervious from a blackout? So unless you have a system that can island away from the grid or basically a microgrid, your solar system will not help you during a power outage.. So here in our home of the future, we have a battery. And so we’re prepared for a blackout., That’s right.. So this is a really special home. You have energy storage, that’s wired to your critical loads and if there’s a blackout, you can pull that energy to power.
Your home. ( gentle, music ). This array, it’ll produce enough energy to power, say 60 % of their needs on a given day..
It varies by clouds season shade., I think, for the house of the future. We probably want that to be more, like 100 %. Is it possible to scale the array Absolutely., The nice thing about solar, it’s modular., So they can live in the house and then scale appropriately over the first year. Right., And so now we’re empowering them will tools to actually manage their house. [ Grant ], Which brings Us to our energy monitoring., Our smart home integrator, Pete Sandford of Smarter Homes, has given us the ability to see a real time. Readout of the energy usage of our home..
We just jumped from 900 watts to 4700 watts.. That jump is gon na. Tell me somebody just turned on the air conditioning and it gives you the idea of wow. That’S how much energy I’m using..
Wow. We’ve put a lot of effort into designing our solar array and our energy storage system into the house to meet the majority of our needs.. On the other hand, all of our tech in this house is probably gon na consume. A lot of energy.
You’d think so, but a lot of these devices are Energy. Star rated and they’re considered low voltage. Items. Your real energy hogs are gon na, be you know your non-LED lights, your air conditioners, the hot water..
So here I’ve brought the control pad for my home. [ Grant ]. Does that say: 875 watts Yeah. When we started we were between 14 and 16,000 watts.. We worked really hard to get it that low.. So let’s go in and turn on some air conditioners and then that way you can kinda get an idea of the spike as well.
So watch. Downstairs we’ll go ahead and drop that down to 70. Upstairs. And let’s go back and see how that’s gon na affect our energy.
Wow.. This is pretty instantaneous Yeah.. As far as our reading goes., It’s already jumped up to 7241.. So at our house we loved what we did.
We saw our new bill., So we contacted Austin Energy and we got this data from them.. So this is before we automated. [ Grant ] Okay.
And then here’s after. And it looks dramatic just as it is. But if you look at the scale., These spikes are during our laundry times and our shower times., And it really enabled us to program our air conditioners to where they weren’t just kickin’ on all day..
So this is what you would do with solar.. So you know we hear a lot of solar companies say. Oh, this is gon na cover 60 % of your usage, but how would they know So having something like this when you’d be able to have the data. Right.
[ Pete ], To support the value of having solar.? You know seeing this energy usage laid out right in front of you is a very eye-opening experience, because normally you just use your appliances and you don’t think how much it’s costing you.. But once you see this, the incentive is to game-ify it to see how much you can save. Everybody. The kids likes to see that number low.. It’S almost like it turns into a mini-obsession. One.
Of’Em was like “ we’re down to 450 watts ,” and I was like that’s the lowest we’ve ever been. You win.. It’S like a new high score. Yeah exactly. New low score., New low score., (, laughs, ), (, upbeat music ). I think that becoming more aware of our energy usage is the first step..
Not only will homes of the future be smarter about how they use energy, but they’ll make us more aware of how our actions influence that usage. And even for those just passing by the house, acts a billboard for a renewable future. Thanks. So much for watching me explore the energy needs and abilities in this home of the future.. Now I’m wondering how would you power yours? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll see you next with a brand new episode. .