During the Fall-Winter 2024 semester, Washington DC’s WTOP News covered the very popular off-grid buildings of EEMI’s Director of Sustainable Energy Professor Scott Sklar (https://eemi.engineering.gwu.edu/sklar-scott). WTOP News, established in 1926, includes an array of news outlets in the Washington DC region, including several ratio stations, social media outlets such as its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and a popular website.
The news coverage discussed how four decades ago Prof. Sklar began to move off-grid by installing solar-powered sump pumps in his Arlington, Virginia, home, followed by solar panels, wind turbines, and other technologies. Today his home and an adjacent business office building also has thermal barrier paint in the attic, all LED lights, solar water heating, a huge hydrogen fuel cell-powered battery bank, a ductless geothermal heat pump and insulating windows. These all power his home completely off the grid.
In the newscast, WTOP quoted Prof. Sklar as saying “I didn’t realize when I bought it that we had a lot of outages, because we had a lot of tree canopy, and we have an old electric grid. I got some solar panels from one of my companies and some batteries, and I installed more than one sump pump.”
“As climate change is getting worse and grids are getting older, we’re getting more outages, so the commercial, industrial and residential sector buildings are starting to add battery banks; as well as utilities are fighting because they don’t want the electricity, because they don’t own it, so I’m trying to convince people (to) just use the power yourself, like I’m doing,” he said.
Prof. Sklar believes what he’s been able to do at his house is the future of residential power. “Now in 2024, a lot of residences are doing it around the country, so it’s not quite as laughable or strange as it was when I started,” he said.
