British family build Europe’s first self-sufficient hydrogen-powered home in the grounds of their parents’ Devon manor house
- Four-bed, off-grid house near Exeter is called Autarkic, after family’s company
- Owners Nick Moffat, 38, and wife Kyrenia, 37, plan to move in with kids in July
- It has taken seven years to acquire planning permission to build the innovation
- All innovations at Autarkic are thought to have cost in the region of £500,000
A British family have built Europe’s first self-sufficient hydrogen-powered house in Devon.
The four-bedroom, off-grid house near Exeter is called Autarkic, after the family’s company Autarkic Living which helps other people trying to build similar projects.
Owners Nick Moffat, 38, and wife Kyrenia, 37, plan to move in in July.
Their home will harvest power from solar panels to be stored in hydrogen tanks, and it will have on-site capacity to treat water and sewage.
The couple are building their energy-saving home on a plot of land gifted to them by Mrs Moffat’s parents on the couple’s wedding day.
Pictured: Couple Nick and Kyrenia Moffat with their two children, Max, five, and Amelia, three
Exterior: The four-bedroom, off-grid house near Exeter is called Autarkic, after the family’s company Autarkic Living
It is being erected in the former site of a Grade II listed manor house.
It has taken seven years to acquire planning permission to build the innovation on rural land.
The new family home will generate its electricity source from 72 photovoltaic panels.
‘Rather than store it in traditional electrical batteries, which aren’t very efficient or good for the environment, we are putting the energy through an electrolysis plant and creating our own hydrogen inside the house,’ said Mr Moffat to The Times.
The collected hydrogen is subsequently stored at high pressure, he said. Anything spare will be used in hydrogen cars they will buy.
Design images of the Moffat’s self-sufficient, hydrogen-powered house in Devon, a European first
Exterior: A double parking garage littered either side with a carpet of Bluebell flowers
‘At night and in winter we can take the hydrogen from the store and put it back through a hydrogen fuel cell, similar to those in buses, to power the house.
‘We can also put it through a hydrogen boiler to heat the house,’ he added.
Drinking water, supplied from a borehole, is purified in a reverse osmosis plant. Rainwater is used for toilets and in the garden. And a treatment system breaks down sewage to a soakaway.
All innovations are thought to have cost in the region of £500,000.
Select schools and universities are invited to visit the house.