In what it says is Australia’s first zero emissions house, CSIRO officially opened its solar powered AusZEH demonstration home last week in Victoria.
The AusZEH is designed to produce enough clean electricity from its 6kW of solar panels to provide all the operating energy needs of the household.
So how does it generate power at night? It doesn’t – it uses a grid connected solar power system generating surplus power during the day; exporting the surplus to the mains grid and then drawing on mains grid power at night time – so, in effect its net total carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions is zero.
The eight-star energy-efficiency rated AusZEH utilises building and renewable energy-generation technologies already available on the market, and new "future-ready" energy management systems.
CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship Director Dr Alex Wonhas says the zero-emission housing in Australia could have a major impact on reducing emissions across the nation.
"CSIRO scientists estimate that if all the new housing built in Australia between 2011 and 2020 were zero-emission houses, 63 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would be saved."
This would be equivalent to taking all of Australia’s private cars off the road for over two and a half years, or mothballing all Australia’s power stations for up to 100 days. Nearly 13 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are due to home energy use.
AusZEH was built in partnership with Delfin-Lend Lease and the Henley Property Group, and supported by the AusZEH consortium. The demonstration house is located 30 kilometres north of Melbourne’s CBD, in the community of Laurimar in Doreen, Victoria.
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