New York State, south of Albany.
Is it possible to scale it up, like a condo? To limit the urban sprawl?
It really isn’t all that special (though I started to skim it). Triple pane windows, heat exchanger on hvac, solar panels.
I wonder if they also have awnings over south facing windows. It’s an old practice (in the Northern Hemisphere) to reduces summer sunlight but allow the winter sun to come through the windows
As long as residents have access to local, durable energy generation that isn’t at risk of outages: very cool.
That’s where local battery storage/EVs come in. Also passivhaus in and of itself is a form of resiliency - if the power goes out during a cold snap, the house will stay warm for quite some time, and the dozen kWh in a battery or the several dozen in an EV go alot further. Efficiency has a multiplying effect.
Absolutely, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
One of the current benefits of having natural gas piped into a house is having a completely distinct power supply system, where one could cook, heat the home, heat water (sanitation), power a generator (plumbed in line), etc.
I’m not saying this is a bad project, I’m just saying that is an adoption challenge to be addressed (resiliency, failover)
Right, but remember only like 60% of homes have gas anyway, so that’s not necessarily the baseline from a resiliency perspective. And a huge chunk of those aren’t actually prepared to operate without electricity either. So while I agree that resiliency is worth focusing on, we should also look holistically about what gas can/cannot do and the associated costs relative to electrification/solar/storage. A modern gas home will still need a backup generator to run condensing hot water/furnace and there’s a significant cost to whole home generators, so it’s not all fun and games just having gas appliances.
Judging from the picture: single-family home with no access to public transport. I’m guessing my emissions from a small apartment close to urban rail is still lower than theirs, even if I heat with gas.
I’m not saying it’s a useless project, but the root problem in America is urban sprawl, making almost every aspect of life overly wasteful, in material and energy.
