Efficiency Maine has announced that their popular $1,000 summer promotion for the Home Energy Savings Program (HESP) has been extended. Sign up by August 31st to qualify for an additional $1,000 beyond the existing $1,500 – $3,000 of incentives available in the program.

Here’s how it works:

• You no longer have to complete the project by August 31st.  Simply send in your application using the Efficiency Maine website.
• You’ll need to have an energy audit completed by September 30th and the project completed by December 31st.
• The $1,000 bonus is above and beyond the HESP standard rebates, which are:
  • 30% of Project Cost up to $1,500 for projects that will result in 25% – 49% total annual thermal energy savings - OR -
  • 50% of Project Cost up to $3,000 for projects that will resulting total annual thermal energy savings that will be 50% or more
• If solar hot water is part of the HESP project you’ll still get the standard solar hot water rebate, including an additional $500 for a total $1,500 solar hot water rebate.

To get started with the HESP program, be sure to submit a request before the August 31st deadline – that will secure your $1,000 bonus rebate. Then find an energy auditor – if you’d like a referral in your area just contact us!

The Home Energy Savings Program is funded by a stimulus grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The GO Home in Belfast, Maine is slated to be the first “Passive House” in Maine. ReVision designed and installed the solar electric and solar hot water systems.

Come see the new super-efficient GO Home — at a Talk-and-Tour at the Belfast Free Library on Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 7 p.m.

On track to become the first Passive House certified home in Maine, The GO Home is the affordable and super-energy efficient model for the 36-home Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage slated to begin construction in the Spring of 2010.

Why Build A Passive House?

The GO Home is designed to solve the problems of energy consumption and greenhouse gases resulting from poorly built, drafty homes, which are increasingly more costly to heat and hazardous to the environment.

Among the energy efficient building elements of this remarkable home are triple glazed windows, doors with three air seals, foundation insulation and comprehensive air sealing – including sealing underneath the foundation and on the building envelope.

To offset what energy the GO Home does consume, GO Logic called in ReVision Energy to install solar electric and solar hot water systems. The solar electric system consists of 2.7KW of Canadian Solar panels, which will offset roughly 4,900 lbs. of CO2 emissions annually. The 60-tube Apricus solar hot water array is sized to meet the needs of a family of four, and will produce an estimated 14,200,000 BTUs of clean, renewable heat energy annually.

So far, we have received a report that in March the prototype has produced more energy than it has used. According to CMP we used 137KWH, and made 184KWH, with a surplus of 47KWH!

This Thursday’s event will feature an unveiling and discussion of The GO Home at the Belfast Free Library followed by a preview Tour at 83 Crocker Road, Belfast, on Saturday, April 10 at 11 a.m.

For more information, please contact Matt O’Malia or Alan Gibson at (207) 338-1566 or visit their website: www.gologichomes.com. To track construction and development on The GO Home, visit the prototype blog at: http://www.gologichomes.com/blog/category/prototype/.

What is a Passive House?

Similar to the LEED program, a Passive House (also known as the German “Passivhaus”) meets very strict requirements for building efficiency and performance, specifically regarding insulation values and energy consumption requirements.

More details of these requirements on the Passive House website.

We put a lot of effort into ensuring our systems will operate trouble-free in New England winters for 20+ years, which is no small feat!  Exceptional manufacturers help make this a reality.

We recently learned that one of the manufacturers we use for solar electric panels, Canadian Solar, received some of the highest rankings in PV USA (PTC) rankings.

These rankings, required by the State of California, exhaustively test module performance in laboratory settings and are required for a module to be eligible for California’s solar financial incentives.

Five of Canadian Solar’s solar module series, the CS6P- 220P, 225P, 230P, CS5P-240M and CS5A-180M obtained rankings that were near the top of all of those tested.

You can read Canadian Solar’s official statement, or see the full listing of PTC rankings and requirements.

Here are some pictures of recent installations that use Canadian Solar panels:

Wall Street Journal journalist Gwendolyn Bounds wrote a story on solar hot water for homeowners – what the technology is like, how it works, and the quite impressive economics of investing in solar hot water.

Rather than tackling the environmental benefits of drastically reducing your oil consumption (since in many homes, a solar hot water system can eliminate boiler usage during summertime), the article focused on the great economic incentives for installing solar hot water.

In Maine, these incentives include a $1000 rebate from Efficiency Maine, as well as a 30% tax credit offered by the federal government.

This economics over environment approach is increasingly common – indeed, it’s consistent with the approach Obama took in the State of the Union – and seems to be steering the minds even of those still skeptical of global warming.

Bounds writes:

In the average home, harnessing the sun’s free energy for daily hot-water needs can be a more practical and affordable bet [than solar electricity]. Water-heating is the third-largest energy expense in most households, after space heating and air-conditioning, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. This year, Hawaii began mandating solar water heaters in most new homes, and cold-weather locales such as New York and Colorado are among the state leaders in installations.

A misconception in Maine is that it is too cold for solar, a fact that is totally untrue! In fact, Maine is far sunnier than Germany, the world-leader in solar installations. Today, a gray January day in Maine, our solar hot water tank at the shop reads a toasty 138 degrees.

Whether your motivations are environmentally or economically driven (or better yet, both!) we appreciate the Wall Street Journal’s efforts in presenting the facts about solar hot water to homeowners.

If you’d like some more information on the technology for yourself, take a look at our solar hot water page or contact us to talk about a free site evaluation at your home or business.

Last week, ReVision Energy attended and exhibited at the first annual Maine Association of Building Efficiency Professionals (MABEP) Training Conference.

The Conference featured training panels on a variety of renewable energy and efficiency topics, including solar power and solar hot water, new construction building science, advanced energy auditing and commercial building energy efficiency.

One of the panels that most interested us was with Dr. Richard Silkman, who is a major force behind the GridSolar project.

What Is GridSolar?

We asked Dr. Silkman to explain:

That link to learn more about GridSolar is www.gridsolarme.com.  ReVision Energy heartily supports this project and hope that Maine is given the opportunity to lead the nation in this SmartGrid transmission project.

Ben Tipton’s house is smaller than many conventional homes, uses sustainable building materials, and has a PV and solar hot water system

Last year we discussed the construction of a sustainable four-person household built by the Tipton family in Woolwich, Maine.

Completed in October 2008, Ben Tipton recently shared data about his home’s energy performance with us.

Over the course of the year, Ben Tipton reports that his Maine solar power system generated about half of his family’s energy needs, and that his current home uses roughly 2800% less propane for heating and hot water than his previous home.

Here are some details:

Thank you to all that helped on our house. Even if you did not pound a nail your support, encouragement and friendship has been felt all along the way. I now have one year of data and the numbers look really good. No place to go from here but down. I have posted them here and on the blog. We could not have done it without all the help.

Here is the final first year tally…..

• Cost per day: $0.93
• Kw created on site: 1415
• Kw sent out to the grid: 700
• Kw purchased from grid: 2614 (wind and eco-friendly hydro power)
• Yearly Cost: $339.86
• Monthly utility Cost: $28.32
• Total Kw used: 3329
• Propane for cooking: 25 gal
• Wood: 1.5 cords sustainably harvested from the land

So what is a net carbon impact this year??? The only thing that wasn’t made on site or in Maine was the 25 gal of propane. Our last house used over 700 gallons propane, 3 cord of wood and 5000kw. I have to say that these number are impressive and have exceeded my expectations. I owe a huge Thank you to all that helped on this project.

Ben

As part of Ben’s and his family’s commitment to sustainability, they continue to look for ways to reduce their energy consumption and sustainably produce what energy they do use.

You can follow Ben’s story on his blog, Simple Living in Maine.
<h3>From our <a href=”http://www.revisionenergy.com/solar-projects/residential/”>Residential Solar Photo Gallery</a>:</h3>

See more installations on our <a href=”http://www.revisionenergy.com/blog/maine-solar-power-projects/”>Solar Projects Map</a>

New Year’s Resolutions

• Eat Better
• Exercise More
• Save Money on Energy Bills

There is no better time than now to work on reducing your energy loads. Successfully reducing your energy loads means you will be spending less money on energy bills each month. To be able to reduce your energy loads you will need to understand how you are using energy in your home; understanding is the first step towards energy efficiency and long term savings.

For most homes we can group energy into either a heating and cooling load or an electrical load. The heating and cooling load can be directly related to your home’s building performance, how well insulated your home is and how efficient your heating and cooling systems are.

To test your home’s building performance you may wish to consider having an energy audit performed. An energy audit is an objective way to assess how much energy your home consumes so you can get a handle on what steps you will need to start taking to get on your way to becoming energy efficient. An auditor will be able to pinpoint areas where your home is losing energy such as leaky windows and door cracks. They will also be able to determine your home’s heating systems efficiencies.

An energy auditor will often perform a blower door test to measure the extent of the leaks in your building’s envelope. They may also use an infrared camera which reveals hard to detect areas of air infiltration or missing insulation. You will receive suggestions of where you can improve your home’s building performance. The less energy your home is leaking out and essentially wasting, the more savings you will see each month.

How you use electricity in your home is a little different. There may be, literally, hundreds of items using electricity in your home. If you find yourself in a state of distress after paying your electric bill each month you may want to start to rein in where that electricity is going out.

Typical Use of Electricity in Your Home

According to the US Department of Energy 20% of a typical U.S. home’s electrical bill is in their appliances and home electronics. Artificial lighting in a home can be responsible for almost 15% of a household’s electrical usage. Electric water heaters may be accountable for 25% of your electric bill. And finally heating and cooling systems are the greatest source of electrical usage in a home, over 50% of a monthly bill. Do you know how your bill breaks up?

Understanding how you are using energy or how you are using electricity in your home will allow you to find ways to reduce that usage. You may realize that there are simple steps you can take that give you big cost savings, such as replacing older appliances with more energy efficient ones. Appliances carry a rating on them so you can tell how much power it requires while on. To reduce your lighting needs make sure to let in natural light during the day.

Replace your incandescent lightbulbs with bulbs that have a lower amp rating. Fluorescent lighting, such as CFLs, uses 25-35% of the energy used compared to incandescent lamps to provide the same amount of illumination. Upgrading your water heater and heating and cooling systems, as well as supplementing with a renewable energy supply will work to add to your monthly savings.

Typical Electrical Consumption by End Use

Every home uses electricity differently. Below is a chart, which according to the Energy Information Administration, is what a typical US home using each month in energy for common electrical appliances.

What are the ghost loads?

Your ghost loads are appliances that are using energy even when they are off. Common culprits of the ghost loads are your microwave, coffee maker, printer, clocks, and the DVD player. Although ghost loads only consume small amount of electricity, they are consuming those small amount 24 hours a day! The ghost loads in your house may be adding up to 100 watts or more a day of electricity you are paying for when you’re not even using it.

Finding out how you use electricity

To find out where your electricity is being used so to start to control that usage, you may be interested in the simple installation of an energy monitoring device. There are a number of energy monitors on the market today. The Energy Detective, or TED, is one of them. The Energy Detective can track and display your household’s electrical consumption in real time; it will also total your monthly consumption.

The system installs through a connection in your electric panel. The TED display monitor can be placed anywhere in the home, somewhere where the whole family will see it to get everyone involved in saving energy; you can even view its data online. The TED operates on the existing wires in your home. It connects to your main electrical panel to monitor specific electricity consumption from appliances, lights and other devices that consume electricity.

TEDs transmitting device, located in your circuit breaker panel, measures the amount of electricity coming into your home as you are using it and transmits data every second over your receiving unit. Your receiving unit can plug into any A/C outlet in your home. As you watch the meter you’ll know how much electricity is being used.

You can turn off different appliances and see to see how the meter changes. Turn off all your appliances to find your ghost loads. We’ve been told a hundred times to turn off lights when exiting a room. This can be a fun learning experience for you and your family to understand how those lights being left on correlates with electricity being used. You can learn more about TED at www.theenergydetective.com.

Resolving to be Healthy

Each New Year is a time for reflecting upon the last year and we make resolutions to live better moving forward. Your New Year’s resolutions are a personal commitment to yourself. You have decided there is something you want to see changed within yourself, your lifestyle, or your behavior.

Resolving to be healthy is what a lot of us seek. We want to eat better, exercise more, or quit an unhealthy habit. Saving energy is also apart of living well and being healthy; not only are you saving money but you are helping to create a more sustainable community and environment to live in.

This New Years resolve to be healthy — to live a healthy lifestyle and build a healthy planet.

More Information. . .

Calculate your own energy loads

Use this formula to estimate how much electricity an appliance uses.

(Wattage x Hours used per day / 1000) = Daily kilowatt hours (kwhrs)

1kW = 1000 watts

100 watt bulb x 8 hours day = 800 watt hours

800 watt hours / 1000 = .8 kwhrs/day or 24 kwhrs/month

At $.16 a kwhr, one 100 watt bulb running 8 hours a day costs you $3.84 on your monthly bill.

You can try this with different appliances in your home. Each appliance should show a rating of volts, amps or watts. Voltage (V) is the potential of electrical flow in a unit, and most appliances in the US are rated at either 120V or 240V; your larger appliances being the latter.

The actual movement of electrical current is called the amperage or amp. The larger the amp rating on an appliance generally the more powerful that appliance is. The more amps a unit has, the more electricity it draws while on. A vacuum cleaner that runs at 12 amps, for example, generates more suction than one that is rated at 6 amps. To convert this to watts you can multiply volts x amps. A wattage or watt is the measurement of the actual work performed by electricity.

The 12 amp vacuum cleaner, rated at 120 volts would be rated at 1440 watts, because amps x V = watts. Now that we know the wattage you can find out how much that appliance adds to your electrical bill. Your vacuum cleaner is not running all the time, so let’s say you use your vacuum cleaner for ½ hour every other day.

1440 watts x .5 hrs = 720 watts / 1000 = .72 kwhrs/day

.72 kwhrs/day x 15 days = 10.8 kwhrs of electricity on your electric bill each month

At $.16 a watt 10.8 kwhrs = $1.78

Although the vacuum has a high wattage rating, because of its low usage it’s generally not the culprit behind a high electric bill. It does add to it however, a good point to keep in mind is that a lot of little things can add up quickly.

To calculate your refrigerators’ load use 8 hours a day as its running time. Although your refrigerator is plugged in all the time, it cycles on and off as needed to maintain its interior temperature. Dishwashers and clothes dryers are typically a home’s biggest appliance loads.

Let’s compare that 100 watt incandescent lightbulb we used earlier to a CFL lightbulb with the same light output. A 22 watt CFL is said to be comparable to a 100 watt incandescent. The 100 watt incandescent running at 8 hours a day was responsible for $3.84 of your total electrical bill. A 22 watt CFL would be:

22 watts x 8 hrs = 176 watt hrs

176 watt hrs / 1000 = .176 kwhrs

.176 kwhrs * 30 days = 5.28 kwhrs/month

At $.16 a kwhr, 5.28 kwhrs/month would equal $.85 a month on your electric bill. That’s $3 a month in savings, or $36 a year for changing just one light bulb!

What’s the difference between a watt and a watt hour?

A watt is a measurable unit of power. The watt is used to specify the rate at which electrical energy is dissipated. A watt hour is a unit of energy equivalent to one watt of power expended for one hour of time. The watt hour is commonly used in electrical applications. The terms power and energy often get confused. Power is the rate that energy is used. In general, energy is equivalent to power multiplied by time.

For example, if 100 watt light bulb in turned on for one hour, the energy used is 100 watt hours. The same 100 watt light bulb turned on for 3 hours, the energy used is 300 watt hours. To convert to kilowatt hours, divide by 1000.