Solar powered home gives back to grid
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In 2009, the home of the Hurston Family in Cocoa, Florida suffered irreparable water damage. For months they struggled to rebuild.
We were in the process of putting our home back together slowly and methodically. We had very limited funds to do it. Damage was much greater than we had realized. We were making headway on it when the earthquake in Haiti hit. We really focused on doing relief flights there and the priority of fixing our home came secondary.
Anne Hill: The Hurston family is a really amazing family because they do so much for Haiti. They take the water purifiers down there and are literally saving lives. Their home was so dilapidated, they had water damage and it was very poor living conditions. Their energy was so towards helping others that they didn’t spend the time or money to do it for themselves. We felt if we stepped in and helped them – took that burden off their shoulders – that they would then continue their work in the world community.
Jake Luhn: One of our first goals was to build a net zero energy home for the Hurtsons. When we started this, we really wanted to do that on a national platform. We waned to educate people that it is time. The technology has advanced enough, it is affordable. There is appropriate payback and it is the right thing to do for the consumer and for the builder.
Coy W. Jamerson III: A net zero energy home is a home which basically produces as much as it pulls in and uses. A zero net energy home means that you’re not using any more than what you’re producing from your home.
Jake Luhn: To offset the energy consumption for a 3,400 square foot home and a family of five, that’s a huge investment of solar panels. I contacted Siemens and I tell you, they answered the bell. Quickly.
Jack Grant: Through the use of the micro inversion technology offered by Siemens, we were able to put together a 9.6 kilowatt system. Not only getting from net zero but to negative.
The micro inverter system, it takes the power from each individual solar module, converts that DC power right out at the module to AC 12240 volts and sends that right down the ground circuit to the electrical panel.
Steve Kuehen: It has a system that is on three different roof elevations and it’s split between where the sun is optimum in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. It’s all so easy for the home owner to actually monitor the performance of each individual solar module. On your particular webpage for your home, it’ll show you which modules are getting less performance and which are maybe a better performer.
Juliet Hurston: Even though we have a net zero energy home, we still try to conserve energy so that we can give back to the grid and stay efficient.
Mr. Hurston: If it’s going right to left, it’s going back to those power lines over there. We have generated 3.34 million watts of electricity and put that back into the grid since January 13 of this year.
Cynthia Hurston: In our former home, the power bill was $300-$400 a month. On average, per month, our savings so far, even with the cloudy days, has been about $250 a month. That savings is with a huge house with a thousand more square feet than our last home.
Mr. Hurston: We have no restrictions at all with dryers, dishwashers, computers, TVs. We also have solar heat which means we’re not consuming a lot of electricity with heating the water. This has been no restriction whatsoever.
Coy W. Jamerson III: We’re changing the way people can do their solar applications. We’re helping builders. It’s a scalable, small system that can be grown from one panel all the way up to forty panels.
The estimate is that by the year 2016 or 2017, we’re going to have something what’s called grid parity. What that means is it’s going to make as much sense to purchase things like solar electrical systems as it is to be hooked up to the power grid and buy power from the power company.
