 Mike Strizki with a bank of portable solar panels at his home in East Amwell Township, N.J. (Photo by Frank H. Conlon) |
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Posted on 06/11/2007 8:53:01 AM PDT by Incorrigible
By JENNIFER WEISS
Mike Strizki with a bank of portable solar panels at his home in East Amwell Township, N.J. (Photo by Frank H. Conlon) |
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EAST AMWELL TOWNSHIP, N.J. _ Mike Strizki's two-story Colonial home in the Sourland Mountains is equipped with a hot tub, big-screen television and power plant that turns a mix of renewable materials _ mostly sunlight and hydrogen _ into all the energy he and his family need.
Strizki, a 50-year-old inventor who works as a director at Advanced Solar Products, a solar installation company, has been ``off the grid'' since October, living a life free of the utility bills that he says once averaged $400 a month. He is now working to bring the solar-hydrogen system that cleanly fuels his East Amwell home to other homeowners. His system was the prototype; Strizki is planning to install a second in the Cayman Islands, where he traveled this week to lay the groundwork for a system at the new home of a bank executive.
The home-powering plant Strizki built in East Amwell is not ready for mass-production _ it cost more than half a million dollars to build, and nearly didn't pass local building code _ but it has generated a force field of buzz.
Strizki said he has received thousands of e-mails and calls from people around the world who want to know how they can fuel their homes, schools and businesses the way he powers his house.
``He's managed to prove a concept and to show that it is technically feasible to create a hydrogen-based solar home and transportation system and some of those components may actually enter our lives in a widespread way in the future,'' said Clinton Andrews, director of the Urban Planning Program at Rutgers University.
Strizki has gotten to a place many homeowners only dream about: He is powering his own home without paying monthly bills to utility companies. To top it off, he is doing it without polluting the environment.
``I'm basically doing what everyone has always wanted to do _ store up heat from the summertime and use it to heat your house in the winter,'' Strizki said.
The land around Strizki's house is both lush (dotted with tall maple, oak, chestnut and hazelnut trees) and messy (a half-dozen cars and trucks, a boat and farm equipment are parked in various places.) A sign at the start of the winding stone-and-gravel driveway that leads to it welcomes visitors to the ``1st solar-hydrogen residence in North America.'' While others have staked a claim to that title, Strizki says his home was the first of its size in which an entire family _ Strizki, his wife, Ann, their 23-year-old son, two Bichon Frises and a cat _ is living.
A white shed-like building that Strizki has used as a workshop now serves as the place where the magic begins. Its south-facing roof is covered with solar panels, and more panels are nearby, on a freestanding unit just outside the building. The panels are the first step in the process that powers Strizki's home, absorbing sunlight and converting some of it into energy, which flows through inverters inside the building that supply power to the house, charges five banks of batteries and powers an electrolyzer.
The batteries provide short-term power and act as a backup. The electrolyzer converts tap water into hydrogen, which is stored in 10 large propane tanks outside, and oxygen, which is released into the atmosphere.
Strizki's solar installation was designed to make more energy than his house needs _ up to 60 percent more in the summer _ and for that reason, he is able to make and store enough hydrogen to get him through the sunless days of a New Jersey winter (via a hydrogen fuel cell, which converts it into energy) and power the New Jersey Genesis, the hydrogen car in his garage that he developed in collaboration with Rutgers.
Gregory Sachs, the lead designer on a house that has also laid claim to the title of first solar-hydrogen home, the United States Merchant Marine Academy/New York Institute of Technology solar-hydrogen home, said the endgame is to create a system where a person can come home at night and fuel his fuel-cell-powered car from the hydrogen he made in his garage. Sachs now lives in the energy-efficient 800-square-foot home, which was transported to Washington for the U.S. Department of Energy's 2005 Solar Decathlon competition and has since been rebuilt in Kings Point, N.Y.
While his home was expensive to produce, Sachs is confident the cost of solar-hydrogen systems will drop as more people invest in the technology. He said the systems generate a substantial cost-savings, not just on utility bills but on harder-to-measure costs such as the political, environmental and health costs associated with continuing to rely heavily on fossil fuels.
``Without a doubt, these are the systems of the future,'' Sachs said.
Strizki's system nearly didn't come to fruition. The tanks he stores the hydrogen in made some local residents nervous and drew rejections from the man who was then East Amwell's zoning official. Strizki said that they hold the energy equivalent of a large sport utility vehicle's tank of gas when full.
People shouldn't worry about stored hydrogen any more than they worry about the propane they keep around their homes, said Ben Kroposki, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who is researching the production of hydrogen through wind power. ``Using today's modern storage technology, hydrogen generation and compression is not any more unsafe than a gasoline engine, really,'' Kroposki said.
The 1,000-gallon tanks Strizki uses are cumbersome, but Strizki said the technology exists to store the hydrogen in smaller tanks at higher pressure and bury them underground.
Standing by the tanks on a recent hot afternoon, Strizki squinted in the sunlight. ``What you're looking at is the ability to store renewable energy for an unlimited amount of time,'' he said.
The final component of the system that powers Strizki's home is a geothermal unit he installed 15 years ago when he built the house. It works like this: Copper coils buried in the ground circulate freon, collecting the coolness or the heat of the earth depending on the season. In the summer, Strizki's central air system extracts the 56 degree ground temperature and transfers it to the home for cooling; waste heat collected in the home is transferred to a hot water tank that provides hot water to the house and hot tub. In the winter, heat is extracted from the earth to help heat his home.
The switch Strizki can flip if he wants to reconnect to the grid is located in his basement. Back on grid, he can either buy power or sell it back to the power company. ``Right now, the grid is my backup,'' Strizki said.
Patrick Serfass, the director of technology and program development for the National Hydrogen Association, said that the size and price of Strizki's system would need to decrease before even a small number of Americans would be interested in buying something like it.
``It's a great project and he's really done some fantastic things to show that renewables and hydrogen make a smart system,'' said Serfass. ``But there's a little more work that needs to be done before this can be market-ready for residential customers.''
Not counting the geothermal component, Strizki's home powering plant cost about $500,000. Much of that was paid for through a $225,000 grant from the state Board of Public Utilities and private and corporate donations of money and equipment; Strizki said he paid about $100,000 out of pocket.
While some may balk at such a high cost, Strizki compares it to the high price people paid for the first computers. He maintains that prices will drop as soon as the ``early adopters,'' people who like to be the first to own new products, install their own systems; he hopes to sell future systems through a company he started, Renewable Energy International, and raise money through a nonprofit called the Hopewell Project. He sees the technology being available to the average consumer in less than 10 years.
``My game is to lead by example, to think globally and act locally,'' Strizki said. ``Others will follow.''
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MAKE YOUR OWN ECO-FRIENDLY CHANGES
There are plenty of ways to reduce your utility bills without installing your own power plant or even putting up solar panels. Here are four suggestions from the U.S. Green Building Council:
1. Replace some or all of your incandescent light bulbs with compact flourescents, which produce less heat and energy. Changing five of the most frequently used light bulbs in your house can save you $100 per year on electric bills.
2. Program your thermostat to reduce its output when you don't need it (during the day, when no one is home, and at night, when your family is sleeping) and save $100 per year or more on energy bills.
3. Use weather stripping and caulk to plug air leaks, which are most commonly found around windows and doors, and save $100 per year or more on energy bills.
4. Tune up your heating and cooling system _ have it checked out every two years to ensure it is running efficiently, and clean the filter monthly during times of peak usage. The result: a savings of $100 per year or more on energy bills.
Of course, turning lights, computers and other powered devices off when you're not using them also can help you conserve energy and save money. The PowerCost Monitor from Blue Line Innovations, an energy display device about the size of a remote control, will tell you how much wattage and cash you're saving every time you flip a light switch. Available for $135 at (866) 607-2583 or www.bluelineinnovations.com.
(Jennifer Weiss is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. She can be contacted at jweiss(at)starledger.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Since my tax dollars paid for half of his project, I'm looking forward to going down the road a bit and taking a dip in the hot tub!
Although this is the umpteenth thread on this experiment from the public coffers, it is entertaining to see so many fallacies expressed so economically.
How much does all that cost? I doubt that the average American family could afford it.
Quick, sombody get the Profit Owl Gore on the phone. Surely he has the answer......
Real payback starts after over 100 years.
Sorry, not-ready-for-prime-time anytime soon.
And who wants to take all those panels down before a hurricane?
Only a fool would spend $500k to eliminate $400/month elec. bills.
As my buddy said, “ The nitwits step over dollars to pick up pennies!”
I mean, is this system equivalent to a automobile (that can be mass produced at a reasonable cost) or to the space shuttle?
Probably $400k was his hydrogen system. He could have had the solar system selling power back to the grid at probably around $100k, and so payback would be at more like 20 years - which probably exceeds any warranties on any solar panels....
Who wants all those tanks filled with volatile hydrogen on their property? Eek!
He’s got the smarts and was willing to put up 100k to put 24/7/365 into making a new technology work. Work the bugs out and mass-produce the best parts of the technology and you’ve got a pretty good return on the investment.
Half a million .... not sure what he's doing but he's not doing it well.
Now we are engaged in a war against an enemy who gains power by controlling energy, so government investment in new energy sources doesn't bother me too much. My preference is Methane Hydrates. I'd love to see a $20B project to crack that problem. It would change the world and make us fabulously rich.
You are only eligible to help pay for his house.
If he took the $500k he spent and loaned it at 5%, he would receive an average of about $1,250 a month in interest alone, easily paying his energy costs, and in less than twenty years, the extra savings would provide an additional $500k.
Wow, that's pure genius. Paying over half a million dollars so he doesn't pay a $200-$400/month electric bill. Brilliant!
According to the article, out of pocket costs were $100K, still a lot, though.
Anything to make Iran insignificant.
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