Zero energy ready homes are coming
When you&#x27;ve confused &quot;per kWh cost&quot; with &quot;energy to the house delivery costs,&quot; this sort of stuff sounds good on paper, but it doesn&#x27;t fundamentally solve the problem that in the winter, homes use a lot more energy than they can generate, and in the spring&#x2F;fall, they will generate a lot more energy than they need.<p>I&#x27;ve got a large ground mount solar install I put in a few years ago (15.9kW nameplate, though mostly east-west facing panels so a bit less annual production than you&#x27;d expect, just more &quot;sunup to sundown&quot; production), and it&#x27;s been a chilly winter, so with an air source heat pump and keeping the house fairly cool, I&#x27;m still net +4MWh from the grid in the last 4 months.<p>Meanwhile, when it warms up a bit more, I&#x27;m generating 10x what the house uses during spring&#x2F;fall mornings (10+ kW production on a sub-1kW house draw for long periods of the day).  It&#x27;s not a big deal with only a few people on the grid, but if every house were doing this, it would be a very big problem for grid stability.<p>I&#x27;ve also got experience with the off-grid lifestyle, as my office is 100% off-grid&#x2F;standalone, and I don&#x27;t pretend that system is cheap.  Just neat.  And even with 5kW of solar hung for a ~100 sq ft shed, I still need propane or a generator in the winter every now and then to keep things sane in here.