No Heat, Water, Electric Bills For This Hydrogen House

del.icio.us It's a lovely 3,000-square-foot colonial.

Inside, turn on the chandelier, the big screen TV or the Christmas tree and the electricity works, as does the heat and the gas on the stove.

What makes this house different, its owner says, is how much it costs him in utilities.

"It doesn't cost me anything," says Michael Strizki, of Renewable Energy International Inc. (REI).

That's right, nothing.

And the secret is a power plant of Mike's own design that collects energy from solar panels and then stores them as hydrogen -- the gas from which all those no-bill blessings flow.

"The solar energy comes down from the roof and goes into these four inverters, where it's converted into house current. Excess energy from here goes into my battery bank. From my battery bank, any excess energy that's not used in the house goes into storage anytime I want to use it by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen through this device that's called an electrolizer," Strizki said.

That's the short version, but the result is free, clean energy so abundant that Mike actually sells the excess back to the power company, with no worries about rising costs.

"No one knows where the fuel prices are going to go. And this is hedging your bet that you are your own power plant and that you're independent of the grid, so you're not vulnerable," Strizki said.

But just how practical is all this? Strizki just designed one unit that's roughly the size of a storage closet for a 4,000-square-foot house in the Cayman Islands.

He said he can make gizmos for places as big as a shopping mall and as small as a Philadelphia rowhouse.

And, unlike most technology, all of this is made in America.

Strizki hasn't neglected his car, either. It's hooked up to hydrogen, too, which means no engine, no oil changes, and no stops at the gas station on the way to the future, Fox 29's Gerald Kolpan reported.