About Zero Sun™
For those of us who live and work in Skellefteå, the winters are long. This means that the dark and the cold are part of our everyday life for much of the year.
This also tests the energy provision to our homes and truly challenges using the sun as a renewable energy source.
Zero Sun is a real-time experiment aiming to make solar technology more accessible, thereby becoming an integral piece in the puzzle for switching society over to 100 per cent renewable energy.
All of which is in accordance with our vision and with EU climate objectives.
If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere
Building a house that runs completely on its own solar power is one thing.
Doing it in a place where sunlight is absent for months at a time is something else entirely.
The solar energy that is generated during the summer months has to last throughout the year, which make this experiment worthy of its name.
Another way of putting it might be, “If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere”.
Modern one-storey house
Zero Sun is a modern one-storey house from the standard range of the Swedish construction company A-hus.
The only customisations are a small upgrade of the window energy class and the fact that the garage space is not a place to park the car but instead holds the technology system on which the entire experiment depends.
Otherwise it looks just like any other house. Although in the summer when all the snow has melted away, the 122 m2 of solar panels on the roof might give it away a little.
A challenge with important lessons for the future
The idea is that anyone should be able to visit or rent the house.
In one way or another, the guests at the Zero Sun will be able to monitor their and Zero Sun’s energy consumption, to look at the energy balance and real time production, and to get a prediction of how long the energy will last.
We believe that it is by challenging ourselves with new and innovative solutions that we can learn important lessons about energy provision of and for the future.