The Solar Powered Barn

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/the-solar-powered-barn/

Your barn has always been a good source of energy. Up till now it has been due to the fact that you store all your wood in the barn. But now you can have a barn that not only preserves your wood for winter it also produces solar energy — enough to meet the energy requirements of the barn and in some cases the access energy can also be sold. Barns are normally constructed at places that have no electricity supply but have a great need for power, for many barns have wood-processing machines and even small offices, and running them off generators can be pretty expensive and polluting.

The architects at Gray Organschi Architecture used raw materials to construct a scrap lumber barn with an array of solar panels installed upon the roof that powers the lighting and ground source pumps that heat the building geo-thermally. It is an off-grid barn and the architects took special care to make it as aesthetically pleasant as possible. The solar power generating barn is constructed in such a manner that it minimizes the buildings environmental impact. Contemporary materials like translucent polycarbonate panels were used in the construction of the barn to orchestrate a feeling of refined and rough, along with every portion of the building being easily accessible.

If this technique catches on it will become easier to setup self-sufficient, energy-reliant structures without polluting the surrounding environment.