The Zero-Energy Solution

Mike Strizki’s house, the house of the future, the revolutionary house that might very well change our lives forever, is an unremarkable two-story, 3,000-square-foot, white colonial-style kit home in front of which, one rainy day last November, were parked no fewer than seven trucks and cars, a pair of Jet Skis, a speedboat on a trailer, several golf carts, a small tractor, a couple of vans and an old dump truck rusting in the middle of the woods, like a major reworking of a Robert Frost poem. There was nothing odd, or futuristic, or exotically “eco” about the house — no solar panels to be seen, no giant arrays of thermopane windows passively drinking up light and heat; yet here, I’d been told, in the Sourland Mountains in New Jersey, an hour from Manhattan, was a house that had the potential — not long from now, not 20 years from now, but maybe within 5 to 10 years — to help turn millions of American homes into fully self-sustaining power plants, each one capable of producing hydrogen to fuel cars as well.
Here’s how the solar-hydrogen house works. The solar panels above Strizki’s garage generate electricity, which goes directly to power his house. For about seven months of the year, the panels are designed to make more electricity than the house needs, as much as 60 percent more during the summertime. Strizki’s system takes this extra electricity and runs it through an electrolyzer, which uses technology invented in the mid-19th century to convert electricity and water into a modest quantity of hydrogen — the energy equivalent of about a gallon of gasoline each summer day — which is then sent to the tanks outside. In this inaugural shakedown year, Strizki had to purchase his hydrogen (19,000 cubic feet of it, at a total cost of about $2,000) to prime his empty tanks. According to Strizki, that’s the last fuel bill he will ever have. Though he will continue to monitor the system, measuring the amount of hydrogen produced, the hydrogen should act like a natural battery bank that never dies or degrades. During the winter months, the solar panels should still provide about 60 percent of the power to the house, he said. It’s then that the accumulated hydrogen will be siphoned from the storage tanks to a fuel cell, which will simply reverse the process of the electrolyzer, reconfiguring the hydrogen back to water and electricity.

Although it can stand alone completely off the main power grid, Strizki’s system is “grid-tied,” which means that with the flick of a switch in his basement, he can connect to the grid for backup power or to sell electricity to the local power company. As a final touch, there is a geothermal component to the scheme. Six feet beneath the lawn, freon gas circulates through a radiatorlike grill of copper tubes, bringing the ground temperature — at that depth it remains a constant 56 degrees — into the house. In winter, some of the stored hydrogen powers a heat pump that steps up the temperature in the Strizkis’ house another 12 degrees. During the 90-degree days of a New Jersey summer, they use that steady 56-degree ground temperature to stay cool and comfortable.

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