» posted on Monday, October 25th, 2010 at 3:24 pm by Woody Wilson viewed 297 times

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Ann Arbor, Michigan Home Is America’s Oldest Net Zero House

Posted October 24th 2010 by J. Angelo Racoma under Green Technology

110-Year Old House Gets an Upgrade & Now Produces Its Own Electricity!

net zero energy house w480

Kelly & Matt’s 110-year old house in Ann Arbor, Michigan is America’s oldest net zero energy house and Michigan’s first of such kind. The house actually produces more energy than it consumes after being retrofitted and renovated. The roof was fitted with solar cells. The walls were fitted with improved insulation. The windows were all changed with insulated glass. The plumbing was converted to low pressure plumbing that requires less water than conventional systems. All this adds up to a net zero energy requirement.

The house usually consumes 10,000 kWh per year, but the solar panel produces 12,500 kWh for a net 2.5 megawatts extra power. This is enough to power an electric car for about 10,000 miles per year.

The total investment cost? $47,130. This yields a return of $104,000 in about 20 years, inclusive of tax credits and feed-in-tariff credits from the electric utility. Not bad for a 110 year old house.

{Editors note: This is one example of how much power is needed and the initial cost to get it. Usually Do-it-Yourself projects will get this done at 1/4 to 1/10 the cost. There are 30 solar panels containing about $3,000 in solar cells. You could build these in 6 weeks or less.}

Written by: Woody Wilson. on October 25, 2010.August 11, 2012

filed under Net Zero Home | one Comment | tags: Net Zero House, zero energy house

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One Response to “Ann Arbor, Michigan Home Is America’s Oldest Net Zero House”

Matthew Grocoff said:
Dec 10, 10 at 2:16 pm
I’m the owner of the house and wanted to make one correction to the article. Please note that we did not replace our windows. We restored the original 110 year old windows and added modern weather proofing. We then added storm windows with low-E glass. These two simple things cost very little and reduced our total house air leakage reduction by 70%.

You can read more and see a video in this case study of our window repair: http://www.Greenovation.TV – look for “Case Study” in the video thumbnails.

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