The Bangor Daily News reports on a new solar installation for the town of Montville, where we recently installed an 8kw solar electric system.

Abigail Curtis writes:

In Montville, the rays of the sun soon will be turned into electricity to power all municipal buildings, and that thought makes Administrative Assistant Susan Shell light up in a big smile.

“We’re very excited,” she said recently. “We thought, why not try to get our town further away from dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels?”

That thought led to the drafting of a grant proposal to request a grant for some American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds designed to help municipalities complete renewable energy projects.

The grant was accepted, which meant that the western Waldo County town would receive 90 percent of the money needed to install 42 solar panels on the roof of the Montville Sand Shed and to make two other town buildings much more weathertight. The $44,733 grant has meant a lot to Montville, which has long been known as a progressive community, Shell said.

Read more on the Bangor Daily News website or as a PDF Download.

On Friday, June 25 the Maine Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council will be hosting a tour of the Bright Built Barn, a net-zero building which has received numerous accolades including LEED Platinum and a 2009 LEED for Homes Innovative Project Award.

Here is a summary of the event:

Join us for a tour of this award-winning, practical, affordable, beautiful structure that is one of the only buildings in the world to be designed to be truly carbon neutral: by making more clean energy than it consumes, over its lifespan, BrightBuilt Barn will actually offset all the atmospheric greenhouse gases produced by its construction.

This in-depth tour will be led by Keith Collins, BrightBuilt’s owner, and Phil Kaplan of Kaplan Thompson Architects, the project’s architect.

ReVision Energy will be there to answer any questions about the renewable energy systems on the building. Please RSVP by Wednesday, June 23 to attend – the event is $10 for members of the Maine Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, and $12 for non-members.

Click here for more information and for registration.

Join designers/builders/owners Zofia and Ian Weiss and ReVision Energy project manager Hans Albee to learn about this unique home’s solar energy system, as well as the design and construction process.

Come see how this super-insulated house is heated primarily by the sun!

The event is free and open to the public, and guests are encouraged to come by with all their solar questions.

ReVision Energy NH Branch Manager Will Kessler shows a 2nd grade class how to use PV to power a small motor

On Friday, June 11 the second grade classes at Horne Street Elementary School took an hour out of their busy schedule to learn about renewable energy, and build their own machines with the help of their teachers Mmes. Breen, Pike, Knox, Tokenol.

“Energy is the ability to do work,” explained ReVision’s Will Kessler. Each student then put their own kinetic energy to the test, rubbing their hands together to make heat, and blowing on windmills of their own construction to make wind energy.

At the end of the presentation, students made their way outside to see if there was enough solar energy on this cloudy overcast morning to power a small DC motor and run the windmills without any wind.

It turned out there was – a small PV panel was enough to cause motion! One second-grade student in Mrs. Breen’s class said: “I thought it was too cloudy, but that was awesome!!!”

Today’s solar cells use reliable technology for harvesting light, which means that the modules work with or without direct sunlight. Even on a cloudy day in New England, there is enough light reflected and refracted amongst clouds for a solar panel to produce at over 50% capacity. During this demonstration each 2.4V (peak) panel was producing roughly 1.2 volts DC.

Afterwards, students had lots of questions about energy: how it’s used, how it’s applied, and, as is often the case – lots of ideas!

Our favorite part – a student’s drawing showing the connection of the small solar array to the windmill’s working motor:

Last night ReVision Energy joined dozens of other partners in Seacoast New Hampshire’s Green Alliance for an event celebrating the Green Alliance’s 2nd anniversary – a cruise on the Piscataqua River on board the Thomas Laighton with the Isle of Shoals Steamship Company.

In addition to GA partners were several hundred Green Alliance members who enjoyed a spectacular sunset and music by the band “Pretending,” a Pretenders cover band. Here’s some video of the event:

ReVision appreciates how so many green events are fun, too! We hope to see you out this Saturday, June 19, at LL Bean’s Green Expo.

We’ll also be hosting our own event aboard the Thomas Laighton on August 4. Stay tuned for details!

The Causeway Club reports fossil-fuels savings of $8,000 in the first year of solar hot water pool heating.

Against the backdrop of gorgeous Acadia National Park is the historic The Causeway Club, which since 1920 has provided a low-key way to relax and recreate. One of its most popular attractions is its saltwater pool, which originally was unheated.

The first upgrade was in 1964, when the brisk Atlantic waters were heated with LP gas, which was further improved in 2008 when ReVision Energy installed a solar hot water system.

“I doubt any of your installations have produced as great a percentage savings,” says Larry Hudgens, General Manager, who reports that in the first year of service the system saved 80% of the prior year’s propane expenditure. The estimated value of that fuel is roughly $8,000. Two years later, Larry reports that the “solar pool heating system is operating as designed with a minimum of commissioning this spring.”

Harvest the Sunshine for Your Pool

Outdoor pool heating is an excellent application for solar hot water, and one that is common in sunny climates like Florida and California. Yet, Maine has ample sunshine to harvest for a pool, extending the duration of swimming season and dramatically reducing the cost of fossil-fuel based water heaters.

Pool heating can take advantage of the very simplest type of solar hot water collector, flat plate plastic collectors made by manufacturers like Heliocol. These collectors use an existing pool pump to direct pool water through a series of valves to the solar collectors. Pool water enters the solar collectors at the bottom and rises to the top through the individual tubes of the collectors, heated by sun the entire time. This warmed water is directed back to the pool, and the cycle continues until the pool is warmed.

More advanced systems can use regular flat plate solar hot water system to provide both domestic hot water and pool heating, which is a helpful dual purpose system (though they are ineligible for federal and state rebates).

Low Profile, High Performance

In addition to being an efficient way to heat a pool, the collectors are low-profile. So much so, that Larry tells us, “It is one of the more innocuous installations I have ever seen. We have a summer full of poolside members and I bet none of them even notice the collectors.”

But they do notice the warm salt water!

More Photos from Our Commercial Solar Photo Gallery:

For more installations, see our Solar Projects Map

As BP continues to struggle to contain the oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, many of us are wondering: how can we help?

We can all take steps to reduce our oil consumption, which we believe is a critical part of the long-term solution to preventing future catastrophes. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels starts with one person, one household at a time.

Save How You Get There

A humbling 80% of petroleum consumed in the United States goes toward transportation. Time to take a bike!

1. Get Efficient – Trade in your gas guzzler for a smaller, more efficient vehicle. Switching from a light-duty SUV that runs at 20mpg to a 50mpg hybrid will save, in the average household, 450 gallons of gasoline a year.

   Soon, electric cars like the Chevy Volt will be available, providing an option to have a “net-zero” car by offsetting your charge time with grid-tied solar power!

2. Drive Less – Even better than driving more efficiently is to drive less altogether. Consolidate shopping trips. See if your employer is willing to switch to a 4-day work week. Telecommute if possible. Could video-conferencing avoid the need to travel out of town for a business meeting?
3. Alternative Commuting – Consider non-motorized options when you do need to get out of the house.  Biking is one of the healthiest things you can do, for yourself and for the environment. Walk. Use public transport if it is available.

Save What You Consume

4. Buy less – Avoid products with excessive plastic packaging – and recycle what you do buy. Bring your own shopping bags and lobby stores you buy from to use biodegradable plastics derived from plant matter. Many of the businesses in the Green Alliance have already made this switch.
5. Buy local – It’s a simple equation: the fewer miles a product has to travel, the fewer gallons of oil burned to bring it to your table. And there are myriad other benefits – see the Portland Buy Local campaign and the Seacoast Local campaign for ideas and inspiration.
6. Buy organic – According to the Sustainable Table, “As much as forty percent of energy used in the food system goes towards the production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.” Organic food avoids petroleum-derived pesticides and other chemicals, which have adverse environmental effects of their own. MOFGA has a great resource list of local food retailers, farms, and CSAs. In New Hampshire, try the NH Farmer’s Market Association.

Save on Energy

7. Plug the holes – Much of the old housing stock in Maine and New Hampshire is literally losing heat out the window. You can start down the road of weatherization with a professional energy audit, and take advantage of great incentives.  This year, instead of cleaning your boiler, have it optimized to burn less fuel.
8. Save the juice -  Many homes are “leaking” electricity as well as heat, simply by leaving gadgets or other appliances plugged in when they don’t have to be, or running them at non-optimal times.  You can test this theory with a Kill-A-Watt meter, which will help you identify which appliances are using a lot of electricity (you might be surprised how many gadgets use electricity even while they’re “off”).

   For more robust electric use monitoring we recommend installing a TED (The Energy Detective), which provides tracking and graphs of electric use over time. Once you’ve optimized your consumption, off-set the rest with grid-tied solar power!

9. Heat smarter – A properly sized solar hot water system in Maine or New Hampshire can save 300 gallons of oil per year. Want to go even further? Rip out your oil boiler and replace it with a clean-burning wood or pellet boiler, or with a condensing gas boiler.

Everyone can do something to reduce our perilous dependence on oil. Take whatever step you can today and plan for the next step when able.

On average a domestic solar hot water system will save an oil-burning household 300 gallons of heating oil each year.

Dick and Nancy Crowley were interested in why their current system did not seem to be producing adequate hot water for more than a couple showers per day.

After looking at historical fuel usage, we found that the boiler’s high mass combined with its inefficient tank-less coil meant a summertime efficiency of roughly 8 percent!

Using the Sun to Shut the Boiler Down

ReVision Energy’s experience installing solar hot water systems to replace the tank-less coil configuration has shown that the majority of the oil burned throughout the summer simply goes up the flue, or heats the basement.

In the Crowley’s case this meant that for every gallon of oil used to heat water for showering and dishwashing, roughly 12.5 gallons were lost to boiler standby.

ReVision custom-designed a solar hot water system using an Apricus 40-tube collector for primary domestic water heating, with an electric element for backup on cloudy days.

Let the Sunshine Spill!

On a good sunny day the solar collector harvests enough energy to raise the tank by about 67 degrees. The boiler now sleeps through the summer months, and is only called to heat the house – its intended function. Dick commented after the ReVision crew had completed and commissioned the system- “I’ve never taken a hotter shower than I do now!”

From our Residential Solar Photo Gallery:

For more installations, see our Solar Projects Map