Seems to me there are 2 issues here
1) Building a much more efficient house, and
2) Powering housing units with Solar energy.
Unfortunately, the article ends up mixing these issues into one
attempt to make a point in order to legitimize solar powered
housing. This is done by necessity, I suppose, because the homes in
the research project were purposefully engineered to be ultra-energy
efficient.
However I would like to see a fair/balanced study on the cost
feasibility of solar-powered housing ala-cart.
Yes you can power an ultra-efficient house using solar, but it would likely be far cheaper to power the house using fossil, if you
subtract out the cost of solar panels.
Taking into account the cost per month to power the house using
fossil, and the cost of the solar panels, how many years before the
solar panels pay for themselves?
Very likely the same number of years as a standard house today: 20-
30 years!
