In these new Catskills homes, no fossil fuels are allowed | The all-electric, solar-powered homes are designed using passive house principles.
In these new Catskills homes, no fossil fuels are allowed | The all-electric, solar-powered homes are designed using passive house principles.
The all-electric, solar-powered homes are designed using passive house principles.
New York State, south of Albany.
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.
Given how close heating and residential gas use emissions are to personal vehicle emissions it’s likely to come down to efficiency of the cars involved and if their solar powered or not.
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)
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.
The Passive House concept by itself can scale up. However, it is expected that you might need to bring in more power from elsewhere at one point when solar alone isn't sufficient to cover local demand.
Somewhat; the highest-density housing is going to be a net consumer of energy from elsewhere though.
