Homeowner of solar-hydrogen house has $0.00 utility bill
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted Mar 17th 2007 3:08PM
posted Mar 17th 2007 3:08PM
Mike Strizki, a civil engineer living in New Jersey has converted his home into a completely energy self-sufficient abode that runs exclusively on a combination of solar and hydrogen power. Using solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, an electrolyzer to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, plus a custom made fuel-cell car, Mike benefits from a utility bill of zero dollars, and the comforting feeling that his activities don't produce any pollution. Currently the solution isn't in any way practical for mass adoption -- the initial cost was $500,000, with half paid by New Jersey state grants -- but Mike thinks that he could reduce this cost tenfold with more research and mass market production lines. There is also some concern amongst experts like Joseph Romm, a former Department of Energy official who thinks that the current relatively inefficient technology and the high cost means that this isn't a viable system for mass adoption just yet. Despite this criticism, Mike says "we have to start somewhere," even if early adopters (in this case rich Hollywood types with a conscience) are required to pay out up to $250,000 dollars to get in on the clean energy action. [Via digg]
And with all the money he's saving on utility bills, the solar-hydrogen system will pay for itself in only ~200 years!
Some basic math of $200 a week (a conservative average) gives you roughly 48 years. Still not that great, but not as crazy as 200 years.
If they gave back to their local energy company, said energy company could be paying THEM. ;)
Hey, it's a start.
If it was always about being cheaper than the older technology, the horse carriage would've still been the predominant form of transportation for much longer.
Except that the automobile offered something that horse-drawn carriages didn't even in the beginning. Apparently all this offers the owner is warm fuzzy feelings in addition to the outrageous costs, expensive replacement and maintainance down the line, large, unsightly equipment, restrictive usage requirements, and possibly increase property taxes. This will never be anything but and enormous financial burden for the owner and won't make one bit of environmental difference.
"(in this case rich Hollywood types with a conscience)"
Good luck.
A real American hero!
Mr. Convert Your House Into a Sun and Hydrogen Powered House Man
I've been thinking about this. If someone were to come up with a more efficient energy generation system, then what would be the disadvantages with each home producing their own electricity (exclusively)?
The same infrastructure would stay in place... and homeowners would be compensated according to how much excess electricity they produce, which would be redistributed to larger buildings which don't have room for generation, e.g., the city, hospitals, etc.
what do you all think? I'm sure we can find a way to keep power companies in the loop (someone has to manage redistribution and compensation), but they just won't be the primary generators anymore - plus, everyone has a role, and has an incentive to conserve more electricity (and will force development of more energy efficient technology).
No silly laws or taxes to "force" development... just using natural incentives and a system dependent on people's cooperation.
I'm sure there are several hurdles to this scheme... I welcome discussion of it.
Centralized utilities make overwhelming sense once population densities grow greater than a certain threshold. I would make no sense whatsoever for everyone to maintain personal electrical generation equipment that is absurdly cost prohibitive just to cut a portion of central generation out. Electricity costs will always be much higher when generated by large numbers of undersized devices.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that individuals will be incented to conserve either. That aspect doesn't change.
Power companies are already set up to buy excess generation capacity from small generators. That's not new. Installations like the one described here don't produce excess capacity necessarily, though. How will the power company budget power when they can't rely on all these small producers to sell to them in times of critical need during stretches of bad weather?
BTW, hospitals are required to have redundant, multi-fueled backup power sources. I see you've thought all this through.
Not sure why this is news. Many many people with solar panels pay $0 for electricity.
Also NO the power company does NOT pay you back. What happens is you you use electricity at night and when it's cloudy and then generate more than you need during the day when it's sunny, so your meter runs backwards. But it stops running backwards when it hits "zero". In other words, you give back what you use, but the power co. doesn't pay you for the excess (if there is any).
The problem is the cost. The best systems are considered sucessful if they pay for themselves in 15-20 years.
Actually here in the UK you sell the surplus "back to the grid" so in theory you could receive an income for excess electricity generated. The problem here is that the electricity companies pay you less per unit than you pay them - which seems totally unfair to me.
The Searle generator is a wonderful fairy tale. There's no independent development or construction of this generator. In fact, it wasn't until this month, of this year, that ANYONE was even able to construct "a proof of concept" demo- which is so far from practical application as to be purely speculative. This occurred over 50 years after Searle began his quixotic "free energy" quest, which was based on his childhood dreams (oh yeah, it's a read). The part I like best: "rare earth metals" will be needed to make this baby run. Hmm. I wonder why they call them "rare" and wonder if anybody's asked the simple question: "if rare earth metals are needed (and they are) how can this EVER be a mass produced machine?
"Dr. Terry Moore, a friend and associate of John Searl's, recently posted two videos at YouTube.com that demonstrate mock-up variations of the SEG enabling John to file for a British patent. He says, and I quote: "The device is not the fully-functional Searl Effect Generator (SEG). It has been constructed for demonstration and evaluation purposes only."
It's not fully functioning because it's still, over a half-century later, impossible to build.
The youtube SEG mock-up variations show cylinders moving around without the need for an external power source. Anything that moves can be used to produce electricity and those cylinders were moving really fast.
Rare Earth Metals aren't really rare. The name became established before people realized they weren't rare. But obviously a metal that isn't currently used a lot will be of little supply. When demand for the metals needed increases the supply will also increase.
@ParisK:
Who says there's no external power source? I'm sorry, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Due to the massive amount of scientific evidence that would suggest the contrary it is hugely more likely that it doesn't work. To prove otherwise would require a huge amount of research to exclude all of the more plausible explanations before there's any chance of such claims being accepted.
Personally, without such evidence my conclusion is that the SEG and other such "over-unity" or "free energy" machines are utter BS. Youtube videos of some guy in a white coat pointing at a spinning object or websites giving convoluted verbose "explanations" peppered with exotic-sounding words doesn't do it for me!
One sunny Saturday afternoon at home:
"Oh man it's hot in here."
"BOOM.'
Congratulations! I wish that more and more people would focus on this, taking care of our planet. And I think the government should really see that solar energy is the answer.......
Anyways thanks for starting it. Bravo!!! :)
If that's a picture of the actual house in question, the guy needs to diversify his priorities a bit and get into green architecture. Notice how all the sunlight is hitting the short side of the building with practically no windows, etc.
Sure, improving efficiency on existing buildings is important, but if his goal is research into cost effective self sufficient, non-polluting housing, then retrofitting poorly designed architecture seems like a fishy way to go. He's spending hundreds of thousands of dollars already, how much would it cost to rebuild his house to take advantage of natural light, passive solar, leak less heat, etc?
I'm sure he's doing some neat stuff, but real progress in sustainable living is going to require building our houses from the ground up with a systemic, holistic plan for utilizing the local environment as efficiently as possible. Active Solar and hydrogen conversion may be part of that plan, but they're still just generic energy sources which will be insanely expensive if we don't make a point of using the energy efficiently.
Solar panels aren't free energy. It takes energy to manufacture them. Where does that energy come from? Efficiency is more important than neat gadgets.
I actually got to visit this house in January. The reason that the house looks so blah is because one of Mike's points is that you can do this with your average house. He bought a house that already has Ground Source Heating/Cooling - so although it looks out of touch (not passive solar), it was already somewhat cutting edge for its time (I believe the house was built in the 80s).
It's interesting to note that Mike produces more than is required to heat and cool the house: he also has a fuel cell car and an electric car that he uses the surplus fuel for. Also - if you look at what he has in his garage... the cost is because no one is doing it yet. Economies of scale as they are, this could become affordable if more people were to take up the challenge.
Hes in Jersey. I sale solar power in New Jersey and I can get a home owner a 8 year payback on there system whatever the size is.
State rebates and net metering and the SREC program make it pay back so quickly.
Dont get me wrong, I'm all for reducing CO2 emissions: but theres no way that this house saves $500,000 in damages to the environment, even if you calculated liberal dollar estimates of the monetary value of the reduced emissions for the next 30 years.
Somebody should have taken Econ 343 (environmental economics) with me last semester.
Why "rich hollywood types with a conscience"? Why not just "rich hollywood types". If they had a conscience, they wouldn't fly in private jets, now would they.
Better still, they wouldn't poo that stuff they call entertainment on us.
When the very first electronic computer was produced it was probably a ridiculous amount of money and some thought it was a "fairy tale". Could this man be in the same position as the computer scientists were back then?
That may be true at this stage, but going back to my car analogy, the car wasn't the greatest transportation means for anything when it started- horse carriages were better in every way except for storage (cars had to be maintained, but didn't need a stable when in the city..) This house, while impractical right now, is much like the Chevy Volt concept car- a hope for the future to bring it down to a realistic price and feasible on a much larger scale.
So you say. I'm not inclined to buy into your recollection of history, however. A car didn't require a horse and that was quite an advantage from the very beginning. Carriages, and the horses that pulled them, also had to be maintained and a car didn't take a crap on you. Imagine how practical horse-drawn carriages would be now for those of us who don't live on farms.
Nevertheless, the world is full of bad analogies and this is merely one. In the case of this house, the solution offers the owner absolutely no advantage other than the savings of a monthly bill. In exchange, he had huge initial cost outlays that will never be paid back, enormous potential service and replacement liabilities, and most likely forced conservation and functional problems because the system contains prototype equipment. Such equipment, if mature and widely adopted, would increase property values and result in higher property taxes that may well offset any electrical bill savings. There is also a large amount of equipment and potentially explosion hazards. No thanks. The reason we have centralized electrical generation is that it makes enormous sense.
Sorry, but likening this to the development of cars is absurd. There's a reason that solar power has never succeeded beyond passive. Solar panels are expensive, fragile, inefficient, of limited output, and have limited lifetimes. All that's new here is the replacement of huge, costly battery banks with a hydrogen fuel cell system to provide extended storage. Nothing has been done to address the solar panel problem itself.
"Some basic math of $200 a week (a conservative average) gives you roughly 48 years. Still not that great, but not as crazy as 200 years."
Except for two things. First, you have to consider what kind of restrictive usage he has to tolerate before assuming he's saving $200 a week. That's pretty doubtful. Second, you have to consider the opportunity cost of the money invested. If you can't get a payback within 7 years you are certainly losing money. Looking at it another way...take the 500 grand he's invested and stick it in a conservative investment. The spendable money that generates (before taxes) amounts to $3000 a month or more; far more that he could possibly save on electric bills. Furthermore, that doesn't consider costs of upkeep, replacement, or his personal time invested. If he's not saving over $3000 a month, the costs diverge and he will never pay for the equipment.
In order for the investment to pay for itself, the monthly savings have to be well in excess of $8000 a month and that's clearly absurd. Assuming the cost could be cut to 1/10 his investment, he'd still need to save over $800 a month and I don't think that's possible either. Given that half of that 1/10 is subsidized as his was, I still think it's a losing proposition. There is no way I'd spend $20K in order to save $300 a month.
I wasn't saying it was worth it financially, I was just saying it wouldn't take 200 years.
Maybe Al Gore and even John Edwards should silence all of their critics and adopt something like this for their houses.
If you can mortgage a house, you can mortgage self-sufficient utilities.