Self contained energy

The house makes its own power,
365 days a year.

Not a solar array bolted onto a normal house. The loads are cut down first, then the generation, storage and controls are sized to cover what is left, in the worst week of the year rather than the best one.

How it works

Four parts, in order.

01 Make Solar array Roof and garage mounted panels, sized against December output rather than June, so the short days still refill the battery on a clear afternoon.

02 Store Battery room A dedicated, fire rated energy room on the main floor with the battery bank, inverters and disconnects. Multi day storage, so weather is an inconvenience, not an outage.

03 Manage Load controller One controller decides priority. Gallery climate, refrigeration, lighting and the well stay up. Car chargers, pool equipment and the theatre pause first when reserve drops.

04 Use Efficient loads Ground source heat pumps, heat pump water heating, LED and track lighting on dimmers, induction cooking, and a tight, heavily insulated shell with energy recovery ventilation.

Why it holds through winter

The hard part is heat, not lights.

In a house this size, lighting and electronics are a rounding error next to heating, cooling and hot water. Putting those on ground source heat pumps means the house draws roughly a third of the electricity a resistance or air source setup would need on the coldest nights, which is what makes a battery bank of a sane size enough.

The envelope does the rest: thick continuous insulation, triple glazing, sealed construction, and ventilation that recovers heat from the air it throws out. A house that barely loses heat barely needs to make it.

Ground loops sized for the full 12,000 square feet plus hot water
Continuous exterior insulation with no thermal bridges at slab or roof
Triple glazed windows, tuned by orientation for gain or shade
Energy recovery ventilation on every floor, filtered for the gallery
Theatre and gallery zones on their own controls, not the whole house
Heat pump water heating with a buffer tank charged in daylight hours

Design targets

Numbers to build the estimate on.

Starting figures for a 12,000 square foot all electric house with a six bay garage and two electric vehicles, in a sunny temperate climate. They move with the site, the climate and how hard the theatre and chargers get used, and a local engineer sets the final sizes.

Annual house demand	Roughly 90,000 to 100,000 kWh, everything electric, vehicles included
Solar array	About 85 kW DC across roof and garage, with room to extend
Annual production	Around 110,000 kWh, deliberately above demand to cover weak weeks
Battery bank	About 300 kWh usable, roughly three days of normal use, longer with shedding
Heating and cooling	Ground source heat pumps on vertical loops, zoned per wing
Hot water	Heat pump water heating with a buffer tank charged during daylight
Vehicle charging	Circuit at all six bays, throttled by the controller, scheduled to solar hours
Backup	Propane or diesel generator with automatic start, expected to run a few hours a year
Grid	Optional. The house is built to run islanded, with a connection only where it is worth having

A quiet house is the point.

Self contained energy is not only about bills. It means the gallery climate never drops, the theatre never stutters and the freezers never thaw because a storm took a line down three streets away. The house simply keeps running.

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