Home > Home & Garden > Home Renovation: Solar Realization (Video)

Home Renovation: Solar Realization (Video)

David Gottfried’s 28-year- old dream comes true: Solar inverters, modules, and solar electric panels are becoming part of green homes everywhere—including his own.

Thu Nov 20 13:50:00 GMT 2008

This is part of a series of video blog posts about green architecture and construction leading up to Greenbuild, the U.S. Green Building Council's annual conference. Planet Green is a Silver sponsor of this year's event, which will be held in Boston November 19-21.

Solar panels make DC power—the kind that comes out of batteries and flows in one direction. That gets fed into a machine called a solar inverter and it flows around a big copper coil and it creates an alternate current—AC current—which is what is used in houses and fed to the grid.

The inverter and our 16 Suntech solar panels represent for me a dream of 28 years. In 1980 I took my first solar class at Stanford with my mentor, Gil Masters, and we designed for our final project our own model solar home. And now, finally here it is.

We'll generate about 2.7 kilowatts of electricity from the sun for our home, and that will make us essentially carbon neutral. At last I'm generating the clean energy I've always dreamed of. In addition, we've installed three solar hot water panels—connected to a Phoenix solar hot water heater, which we'll use for hot water and heating.

Dreams do come true.

David Gottfried started Regenerative Ventures and its consulting arm, WorldBuild in 1995, after founding the U.S. Green Building Council in 1993. He is the author of Greed to Green, and is internationally acknowledged as one of the foremost founders of the global green building movement.

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Home > Home & Garden > Home Renovation: Solar Realization (Video)

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David Gottfried's Home Renovation: Building an Office Lifepod (Video) 17 Nov 2008 \| COMMENTS Welcome to my new office—the Gottfried Lifepod. This was a joint venture between Envision Solar and my team. We greatly improved the base steel structure with eight solar panels on the roof and figured out how to make it into a super comfortable home office.	{ }
Building an Efficient Bathroom (Video) 19 Nov 2008 \| COMMENTS	{ }
David Gottfried: Green Renovation and Historic Choices (Video) 17 Nov 2008 \| COMMENTS	{ }
Electric Heating Guide 25 Oct 2009 \| COMMENTS	{ }
Natural Gas Heating Guide 25 Oct 2009 \| COMMENTS	{ }

Home Renovation: Solar Realization (Video)

David Gottfried’s 28-year- old dream comes true: Solar inverters, modules, and solar electric panels are becoming part of green homes everywhere—including his own.

David Gottfried's Home Renovation: Building an Office Lifepod (Video)

Building an Efficient Bathroom (Video)

David Gottfried: Green Renovation and Historic Choices (Video)

Electric Heating Guide

Natural Gas Heating Guide

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