Living off the grid

Welcome back to JJNN.

Today's article is taken from Searchina news.

This is yet another in a lot series of articles all about saving electricity. This time the company Sharp has vowed to produce a house, which they have decided to call the "Eco-House," that actually uses 0 electricity from the power grid. The goal is to produce a house that has the usually appliances, but have those appliances use only a fraction of what the traditional appliances use. The house should be comfortable to live in, but still use as little electricity as possible.

Sharp has a challenge ahead of them. The house is located in the middle of Osaka, one of the hottest cities in Japan. Cooling the house in summer and heating the house in winter is going to take some energy. But, never fear, our old friends solar panels and efficient batteries are here. That is basically Sharp's plan, use efficient and low energy consumption appliances and offset the energy usage with solar panels and efficient batteries.

If that were all there is to this story there wouldn't be much of a story actually. Sharp has taken a few measures to make the house use even less energy. The first of those steps is called HEMS; which stands for Home Energy Management System. HEMS is a system in which the owner of the house can use their television or a tablet computer to check on the power consumption of the house as a whole and also the consumption of each appliance in their house. It is a way to get the owner of the house more interested in power saving. HEMS can also be used to see how much power is being produced by the solar cells, how much electricity is being stored in the batteries and how long the batteries will hold out under the current usage rate.

Sharp is also looking deeper into appliances that run on DC power. They want to use DC power because that is the type of power that is produced by solar cells. If the appliances run on DC power then the power will not have to be changed to AC power between the solar panel and the house. This will make for a more efficient use off the energy produced by the solar panels.

It is  now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 太陽(たいよう). It is pronounced taiyou and it means sun. Imagine what we would be able to do if we were able to full tap the power output of the sun.