I met with Mr. Koplinka-Loehr yesterday. We visited his house which is completely off the grid. It was the coolest. The house was built by Cornell college students for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The houses entered must be cost-effective, energy efficient, and attractive. In my opinion the house wasn't that attractive from the outside, but on the inside it was the coziest house I'd ever seen. It wasn't a small house, but everything had been built to not waste space and therefore, to not waste energy.  It was very compact on the inside, but still left plenty of room to navigate throughout the house. For example, the refrigerator was build into drawers. that meant that when you opened the drawer (refrigerator) the cold air would not fall to the ground and be wasted. It would stay in the drawer and therefore, save energy. Refrigerator's are also very energy intensive. Another cool thing was their stoves were heated up by magnets revolving. It would take like ten seconds to heat them up, and after like two second they had already cooled down, wasting no heat and no energy.

It had 72 solar panels which were connected  to72 batteries. The electricity from these was then sent to a converter which would convert the direct current from the solar panels, to alternating current which is used by the majority of household appliances. The difference between direct current and alternating current is that direct current can only go in one direction, and it losing energy over time. Alternating current doesn't lose energy over long distances and can go in either direction.

Something I learned that I could do to retain the  heat brought into my mudroom would be to put a piece of soap stone in the room. During the day it will absorb heat from the hot air, and at night it will release the hot air and keep the room warm. Even though my solar panel is a passive air collector box. This visit was still very helpful, and really cool. I would have wanted to do it even if I wasn't doing this project.