Transcript: Solar House

Chandler van Voorhis: Chandler speaking, what's up? As we become more gadget city USA we’re increasingly reliant upon the energy that comes through those electrical sockets of ours, and most of that energy is coal and natural gas.

Host 1: Coal, oil, and natural gas have to be burned in order to create energy. That burning create air pollution including carbon dioxide. People have been talking for years about making energy from clean sources, like the sun and the wind.

Radio Announcer: Welcome to GreenWave Radio, America’s number one show on the environment and business. Now here are your hosts, Carey and Chandler.

Host 2: Carey and Chandler are environmental journalists. They do their show every week on the radio and on the web. They’re crazy about energy, and they hang with the experts every day.

Chandle van Voorhis: Joining us today is Alden Hathaway.

Host 1: Alden Hathway is an electrical engineer, and he works for an organization that tries to get people to buy clean energy. He also recently built his dream house – a solar powered zero-energy home.

Alden: On average, I’m generating more energy I need from the solar energy, and that’s what makes this a zero-energy house.

Host 2: Alden’s house was built on the national mall for Earth Day 2000.

Alden: Between the Capitol and the President’s house.

Carey: Yeah, how'd that happen?

Host 2: He and his kids gave tours of the house to almost 26,000 people in just one week. Since then, the house was moved to Virginia and it’s not open to the public – but lucky for us, Alden’s 13-year-old son Tripp agreed to give What’s Up a private tour.

Tripp: Hi, I’m Tripp Hathaway and this is my home. First of all, this is a solar house. Panels that collect energy from the sun–that’s why they call them solar panels…that's solar comes from sun.

Host 1: It doesn’t matter if it’s cold out, but it can’t be dark or cloudy. This kind of solar energy system is called “photovoltaic,” which in English means it generates electricity from light.

Host 2: I think we all need a minute to see how it works.

Jean Posbic: This is the material that we use to make our solar cells. It’s silicon, pure silicon; it’s the second-most abundant element on earth.

Host 2: The little pieces of silicon are melted down at a temperature of nearly 1500 degrees centigrade – that’s 2700 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the silicon is sliced into super-thin wafers and coated with metals that conduct electricity. It’s one of these metals that gives them the blue color.

Jean Posbic: Interestingly, these solar cells regenerate the energy that it took to make them in less than a year.

Tripp: This is the inverter. The energy that goes through from the sun to the solar panels comes straight to the inverter. And energy that you are using would either go straight to where you are using it or it would be a stored to the batteries.

Host 1: The batteries are a back-up in for when it's dark or rainy.

Host 2: On sunny days, Tripp’s family sells the extra electricity to the power company. If the house produces more energy than the family uses, Tripp’s dad gets a check instead of a bill.

Host 1: Four words for that: energy efficiency and conservation. Tripp and Alden spent three years tracking the energy use in their old house, and figured out ways to cut it in half.

Tripp: This is basically what makes this house zero energy because it is so energy efficient. The pipes through here, they come in from under the ground, and they take the earth’s heat to heat the house and it is called geothermal heating, geo for earth, thermal for heat.

Host 2: The Hathaways also switched over to energy-efficient technologies like you might have at home –an Energy Star fridge, energy efficient computers, and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Host 1: But did you know that if you leave the average desktop computer running all the time, it uses twice as much electricity as Tripp’s refrigerator does?

Host 2: How wasteful is that? Tripp told us that he’s really careful to conserve energy.

Tripp: Don't leave the TV running all day when you are not using it. Make sure your lights are turned off. Little things like that.

Host 1: You might think Tripp’s family is unique in generating their own electricity rather than buying it from the power company, but these solar panels in a park nearby generate electricity to power a community theater housed in this barn. And this is the solar array that powers GreenWave Radio’s web site and nearly 500 others.