What is "plusenergy"

PlusEnergy is a term used in building design to describe a structure that produces more energy than it uses. The term was coined in 1994 by Rolf Disch when building his private residence, the Heliotrope as the first PlusEnergy house in the world. Disch then went on to refine the concepts involved with several more projects built by his company Rolf Disch Solar Architecture in order to promote PlusEnergy for wider adoption in residential, commercial and retail spaces. Disch maintains that PlusEnergy is more than just a method of producing environmentally-friendly housing, but also an integrated ecological and architectural concept. As such, PlusEnergy is intended to be superior to low-energy or zero-energy designs such as those of Passivhaus.