"Revisiting one man's [allegedly] zero-emissions home energy system: It's still expensive, and still far from efficient"

Solar-Hydrogen House Still a Work in Progress - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

EAST AMWELL TOWNSHIP, N.J. – In October 2006, after engineer Mike Strizki transformed his New Jersey home into the nation’s first zero-emissions, totally sustainable “solar/hydrogen” house, a wave of media attention followed, including a feature story in The New York Times Magazine. At the time, Mr. Strizki predicted his prototype system would start to make a lot more economic sense as the cost to produce it dropped and energy prices rose. Plus, he said, it could help save the world from global warming.

Two years later, Mr. Strizki’s company, Renewable Energy International, has yet to install a single new system, and it hasn’t secured any significant source of investor funding. But R.E.I. does have its first customers lined up, including a homeowner in the Cayman Islands, and Mr. Strizki remains unreservedly optimistic.

“Two years from now, I’m going to be installing these things all over the world,” he said. “I’m going to be licensing out franchises. And I’m going to be working on improvements to the units every day.”

The prototype system now installed on Mr. Strizki’s 3,000-square-foot home works by converting energy gathered by solar panels into hydrogen gas, which is stored in propane tanks in his backyard. When the solar panels can’t meet the energy needs of his house and his backup batteries are low – say on a cloudy day in the middle of the winter – the hydrogen fills the void by powering a hydrogen fuel cell.

The hydrogen can also be used to power a zero-emissions fuel cell car.

The catch? His prototype cost $500,000 to build.