Josh’s House(6kW)

Josh’s House is a 10-star energy efficient residential building project in Hilton, a suburb in Fremantle in Western Australia. Josh Byrne’s described this project as “the most ambitious house project yet”. It consists of two separate homes which will be thermally comfortable year round, without the need for air conditioning or additional heating. They will generate more solar power than they use and in addition will harvest and recycle water. Solar power plays a big part in the energy efficiency of a home, and this project was no exception.

Infinite Energy took this and all other elements of their brief into account when designing and installing their solar power system. Some of the elements considered were: the electricity consumption, roof orientation, roof capacity, and the customer’s desired payback period.

Surprisingly for Josh’s House and many customers the recommended system has more maximum panel output (kW of DC), than maximum inverter capacity (kW of AC). Therefore we recommended a 3 kW REC solar array paired with a 2.5 kW Fronius inverter for each dwelling. At Infinite Energy, we will always customise and optimise the design of a customer’s solar system and ensure we don’t just sell standard x kW systems without assessing their need. This solar project will allow them to not only fulfil their need for a sustainable environmentally friendly home but to safeguard them against energy price rises in the future.

In this episode Josh shows off all of the ways in which his sustainable housing project is using the sun. In fact, the whole design of these ten star energy efficient and high performance homes are guided by the sun. They use it for warmth, power and hot water. The sun also determined room and window positions and lots of the internal fit-out choices. You will get some great tips on how to choose a good residential solar power system and Josh will explore some of the finer details of other sun-related elements. You’ll also have young Ollie giving us his thoughts, in Episode 9 of Josh's House.

The Benefits

• The system has been designed to offset the entire energy consumed at Josh’s house.
• The solar panels have a one year energy payback – entire manufacture, assembly and decommissioning.
• The system will offset 4362 kgs of carbon which is the equivalent of planting 3850 Trees over 10 years of production.