Here’s our gift to the planet: A house that makes more energy than it uses. Seattle City Light isn’t left out in the cold, though; we have electric vehicles that use plenty of power, as you can see in the graph below. In our quest to use only local energy resources (solar), we actually could do better with a heat pump that is more efficient, and a couple of other things, but today we are going to stop and bask in the moment. Even our home office, which is not a household load, is covered by the production of the last 12 months.
What do the numbers below mean? Our space heating (which used to consume about 12,000 kWh/year) used just 2,360 kWh this heating season, an 80% reduction. The biggest load on the house electric bill is now EV charging, and by a long shot. This is the way more and more homes are going, and the number of zero or near-zero houses on this year’s Green Home Tour bear witness to that.
