House Built In UK Produces More Energy Than It Consumes!

energy home
Photograph: Cardiff University

Designers with Cardiff University in the UK recently built a house that actually produces more energy than it consumes. The house is being advertised as Britain’s first “energy positive” house.

The house took just 16 weeks to build and cost only £125,000. The house is able to produce energy by using solar panels, which are connected to batteries that store the excess electricity.

It was reported by the Guardian that for every £100 spent on electricity, the house should be able to generate £175 in electricity.

It was disappointing to see Osborne scrap the plans, but the devolved Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments can set their own building standards. One reason we built this house was to demonstrate to builders that you could meet the standards at an affordable price with off-the-shelf technology. The housebuilders could do it too if they wanted to,” Professor Phil Jones, with the Welsh School of Architecture told reporters.

“We save money and space by making the photovoltaic panels the roof itself and by dispensing with radiators and making the air collector part of the wall. The building demonstrates our leading edge low carbon supply, storage and demand technologies at a domestic scale which we hope will be replicated in other areas of Wales and the UK in the future,” Jones added.

The project also received praise from Welsh economy minister Edwina Hart, who said that, “this unique property has the distinction of being the first building of its kind in the UK. It is a great showcase for the technologies being developed in Wales, with the potential to be adopted and replicated in future housing developments across the UK creating wide ranging long term benefits for the economy, the environment and occupiers.”

According to a recent estimate released by the International Energy Agency, solar will be the world’s primary source of energy by 2050.


John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.

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