(calm music)
- Remember the Jetsons?
They had gadgets galore
from holograms to a robotic maid,
but they also probably had an astronomical electric bill
as well as a massive carbon footprint.
That's still an issue for our own home of the future,
but unlike the Jetsons,
we're actually using some of that cutting edge tech
to solve it.
(light music)
As homeowners of the future
we'll have more ability to monitor our energy consumption.
But before we get to that,
let's talk about where that energy's coming from,
because the home of the future will always need power.
We built our home to generate a lot of its own power
from solar panels installed on the carport roof.
In fact, the solar panels are the carport roof.
- It's an integral part of their house
architecturally, and that was part of the design
of the house from the beginning.
- [Grant] Stan Pipkin is the owner of Lighthouse Solar
here in Austin,
which specializes in integrated solar design.
- [Stan] When Carter put up panels on the white house
(laughter)
nobody liked 'em because they were big,
they were bulky, they stood out.
- But these are something entirely different.
- [Stan] This gives architects something to
go wild with.
(upbeat music)
- [Grant] If you look around Austin,
this is very different than most solar retrofits
that have the panels tacked onto the roof.
Our solar installation is deliberately
and artfully designed,
made to feel like a natural, essential part
of the house itself.
- I think the whole industry understands,
it's silly to sorta slap solar on top of the building.
Why not make the building electricity generating itself?
- [Grant] This is Katharine Beisner,
an expert in solar technology.
- People are definitely trying to make the solar panels
better looking.
It's still by and large in residential,
putting solar on top of a roof.
Now a lot of them look like just gorgeous black
flat screen TVs and it's very low-profile.
And I suspect we'll see a lot of these products
in the future.
(upbeat music)
- [Grant] Here's how the system actually works.
- Each one of those squares individually is a solar cell.
They produce, collectively, DC power
that flows to the inverter.
And then it's changed to AC power
and that's what the house can run on.
- And any energy not used by the house
flows into a lithium ion battery.
So, let's say a homeowner installs solar.
Does that make them impervious from a blackout?
- So, unless you have a system that can island
away from the grid, or basically a microgrid,
your solar system will not help you during a power outage.
- So here in our home of the future,
we have a battery.
And so, we're prepared for a blackout.
- That's right.
So, this is a really special home,
you have energy storage that's wired to your critical loads
and if there's a blackout,
you can pull that energy to power your home.
(gentle music)
- This array, it'll produce enough energy to power
say, 60% of their needs on a given day.
It varies by clouds, season, shade.
- I think for the house of the future,
we probably want that to be more like, 100%.
Is it possible to scale the array?
- Absolutely.
The nice thing about solar, it's modular.
So, they can live in the house and then scale appropriately
over the first year. - Right.
- And so now we're empowering them will tools
to actually manage their house.
- [Grant] Which brings us to our energy monitoring.
Our smart home integrator, Pete Sandford of Smarter Homes,
has given us the ability to see a real time readout
of the energy usage of our home.
- We just jumped from 900 watts to 4700 watts.
That jump is gonna tell me
somebody just turned on the air conditioning
and it gives you the idea of,
wow that's how much energy I'm using.
- Wow.
We've put a lot of effort into designing our solar array
and our energy storage system into the house
to meet the majority of our needs.
On the other hand, all of our tech in this house
is probably gonna consume a lot of energy.
- You'd think so, but a lot of these devices
are Energy Star rated,
and they're considered low voltage items.
Your real energy hogs are gonna be you know,
your non-LED lights, your air conditioners, the hot water.
So, here I've brought the control pad for my home.
- [Grant] Does that say 875 watts?
- Yeah, when we started we were between 14 and 16,000 watts.
We worked really hard to get it that low.
So let's go in and turn on some air conditioners,
and then that way you can kinda get an idea of
the spike as well, so watch.
Downstairs, we'll go ahead and drop that down to 70.
Upstairs.
And let's go back and see how that's gonna affect
our energy. - Wow.
- This is pretty instantaneous
- Yeah. - As far as our reading goes.
It's already jumped up to 7241.
So at our house,
we loved what we did, we saw our new bill.
So we contacted Austin Energy
and we got this data from them.
So, this is before we automated.
- [Grant] Okay.
- And then, here's after.
And it looks dramatic just as it is,
but if you look at the scale.
These spikes are during our laundry times
and our shower times.
And it really enabled us to program our air conditioners
to where they weren't just kickin' on all day.
So, this is what you would do with solar.
So, you know, we hear a lot of solar companies say,
oh this is gonna cover 60% of your usage,
but how would they know?
So, having something like this when you'd be able to have
the data. - Right.
- [Pete] To support the value of having solar.
- You know, seeing this energy usage laid out
right in front of you
is a very eye-opening experience
because normally you just use your appliances
and you don't think how much it's costing you.
But once you see this,
the incentive is to game-ify it
to see how much you can save.
- Everybody, the kids, likes to see that number low.
It's almost like it turns into a mini-obsession.
One of 'em was like, "we're down to 450 watts,"
and I was like, that's the lowest we've ever been.
You win.
- It's like a new high score.
- Yeah, exactly.
New low score. - New low score.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
- I think that becoming more aware
of our energy usage is the first step.
Not only will homes of the future be smarter
about how they use energy,
but they'll make us more aware of how our actions
influence that usage.
And even for those just passing by,
the house acts a billboard for a renewable future.
Thanks so much for watching me
explore the energy needs and abilities
in this home of the future.
Now I'm wondering, how would you power yours?
Let us know in the comments below
and we'll see you next with a brand new episode.