• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is building a net-zero-energy demonstration house at its Gaithersburg, Md., campus.
• It is a 2,700-square-foot, two-story building and will include green and energy-efficient elements such as energy-saving appliances and solar panels.
• The home is equipped with lots of monitors and devices to simulate people moving from room to room, using appliances and affecting the indoor environment.

“We saw the need for a test bed for new energy-efficient technologies, and we saw it as a way to demonstrate that it is possible to build a house that, over the course of a year, will generate as much energy as it uses,” says Hunter Fanney, chief of the Engineering Laboratory at NIST’s building environment division.