Tom Southworth’s BEYOND net zero home will sell power to the grid each year!

Tom Southworth’s commitment to sustainability runs deep. Since 1974 he’s owned and operated a water-powered sawmill in Lancaster, New Hampshire, around which he built the successful Garland Mill Timberframes business. Tom imparted his passion to his son Ben, whose work includes turning a 1970s ranch house into a LEED Platinum, Net Zero showcase. So when it came time to build a home to retire in, Tom set his sights high: he wanted a house that would not only generate all of the electricity it uses each year, but also produce a surplus to sell to the grid.

New Hampshire Ups the Ante

“What got me started in this direction is when New Hampshire went beyond net billing and offered to write me a check if I produce more power than I use,” Tom says. “I took a hard look at my energy usage and determined that 8,000 kWh/year would allow us to meet all our needs and be a net exporter of electricity.”

Most impressive is that Tom both exports power to the grid and heats his home with electricity. While conventional wisdom is that electric heat is expensive, 21st century building standards challenge that assumption completely.

“While it’s not official yet, we built this house to meet German passivhaus standards,” Tom says. “This means an extremely well-insulated building envelope consisting of 12″ exterior side walls packed with cellulose sheathed with 2″ foam, and 40″ of cellullose packed into the truss system. We moved in on April 1st and so far have not used any heating whatsoever.”

Tracking Results

Tom Southworth’s solar thermal storage tank is tied into its own electric meter to track run time of the backup electric element

To keep track of his goals, Tom uses a decidedly analog but very effective method of monitoring his systems – an extra electric meter dedicated to tracking photovoltaic production, and a second dedicated to his hot water tank. In addition to the photovoltaic system, Tom had us install a solar hot water system tied into an existing 120 gallon storage tank with electric backup.

“Since we don’t really know much electricity our backup tank will use in the winter, we added the second meter so we could really understand it,” Tom says, “We expect to use only solar-heated water from May through September and will be closely watching how much the electric element is needed in the other months.”

Power While the Sun Shines

Now that everything is up and running, Tom says the system is so far “on target” for photovoltaic production.

“I’m 100% pleased with the system,” Tom says, “I look forward to enjoying my years of retirement knowing my energy comes from the sun.”

The solar electric system on the fire station in Manchester, Maine will provide more than half the power for the building

The Town of Manchester, Maine, has one of the first solar-powered fire stations in the state! Last month we finished installation of a 9.2kw grid-tied photovoltaic array, which will provide over 11,000 kWh of clean energy annually – or roughly half of the power used in the facility.

The Kennebec Journal reported on the project. Keith Edwards writes:

A new array of 44 solar panels atop the fire station is expected to supply about half the electricity the building needs.

“It’s in, it’s making electricity right now,” [Town Manager E. Patrick] Gilbert said of the system.

The system is connected to the power grid, so when it is producing more power than is needed at the fire station, that excess electricity goes into the grid, and the town will get a credit on its bill from Central Maine Power Co. for that electricity.

“Whatever we don’t use dumps back into the grid,” Gilbert said. “There will be good (electricity-generating) days and bad days.”

… Gilbert said the location is expected to allow the panels to work at about 95 percent of their capacity … He said he hopes to ultimately make the system’s monitoring information available on the town’s website.

The project was supported by a grant from Efficiency Maine made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Transportation accounts for about 27% of all energy used in the U.S., and most of the gasoline. Yuck!

Long distances between our communities in ME and NH is a big part of what makes our two states among the most oil dependent in the nation.

The good news is that the electric cars just coming to market will enable northern New Englanders to eliminate their consumption of gasoline and the associated emissions.

Hybrid vehicles are already helping reduce fuel consumption, and totally electric vehicles (EV) will be on our roads in the coming months. And when a vehicle is powered by electricity, it means it can be powered using electricity provided by the sun!

Turning Over a New LEAF

In 2011 the very first Nissan LEAF vehicles will hit the market, and while it appears it will be a little while before a full fledged rollout in Maine and New Hampshire, these cars promise the first chance for a truly net-zero driving experience.

The all electric Nissan LEAF will run on all electric and drive for up to 100 miles on a single charge.

The LEAF is a 100% EV, with no gasoline engine (or tailpipe!) at all. Its 24kWh battery pack boasts a driving range of up to 100 miles on a charge, though many claim that 60-80 miles is a more realistic range.

Each “fill up” will cost around $4 (based on a delivered electric rate of $0.16/kWh). For a household driving around 15,000 miles a year, a conservative estimate of fuel cost is around $750 of electricity each year, vs. over $2,700/yr of gasoline in a typical 22mpg vehicle!

3.6 kw Solar Array = Fossil-free LEAF

With solar electricity you can offset some or all of the LEAF’s energy use. One kilowatt of solar panels will generate roughly 1,300 kWh/year in Maine or New Hampshire. A home with a fairly heavy driving load of 15,000 miles/year can therefore completely offset their transportation load with a 3.6kw solar electric system.

The costs look something like this:

$18,000 gross installed cost
-($5,400) federal tax credit
-($2,000) state rebate
$10,600 net investment

Estimated power production over 20 years: 93,600 kWh
Locked-in rate per kWh: .11c/kWh
Yearly energy cost for LEAF, with conventional power: $750
Yearly energy cost for LEAF, with solar electric: $516
Yearly fossil fuel emissions for LEAF, with conventional power: 5,200lbs.
Yearly fossil fuel emissions for LEAF, with solar electric: 0

And of course, if you drive less, any excess power will go against your regular electric bill!

That’s the beauty of grid-tied photovoltaic electricity – even if you are not home to use your solar power, you’re still getting credits for that power when it’s sold to the grid.  So even if you charge your EV at night, you’ll be using your own solar credits to refuel the car.

The Chevy Volt

Dubbed the “electric vehicle that goes further,” the Chevy Volt will seamlessly transition to a gasoline backup engine when the built-in battery is exhausted.

The Chevy Volt is Detroit’s take on the electric vehicle, combining a 16kWh battery with an estimated range of 35 miles (93 MPGe according to the EPA) and a range-extending gasoline generator for longer drives that nets around 37MPG.

The gas backup is to combat “range anxiety,” the motorist fear that they might be left stranded if they run out of juice while nowhere near an EV refueling station.

A Washington Post reviewer summed it up well:

What makes the Volt the Darling of Detroit is that it has been reverse-engineered to match the perverse American psyche. Americans hate buying gas but love to drive. We definitely want to stick it to the sheikhs, and in the process maybe save the planet, so we want cars that run on sunshine, twigs and happy thoughts. But these cars also have to kick some ass. And be able to make an impulsive 90-mile run to Philly when we suddenly have a hankering for cheese steak. And we don’t want to worry about hunting for twig refueling stations along the way.

All of that is what the Volt is theoretically designed to deliver.

The Volt’s electric MPG is fairly close to the Nissan LEAF (92MPGe and 99 MPGe respectively), though its all-electric range is less than half.  However, for the commuter who drives less than 35 miles a day (or can refuel at work), the possibility for an all PV-powered car is just as viable for a Volt owner as the owner of the all electric LEAF.

What About the Battery Charging Infrastructure?

How to refuel your electric car is one of the most talked-about and interesting areas of the dawn of the EV.

A parking lot structure with solar panels in California

While the cars can be refueled with a conventional 110AC power socket, it is much more efficient to charge them with a special “Level 2 Chargers.”  These 240V, 40a chargers will charge the LEAF in around 6 hours and cost the homeowner around $2,000, assuming their home can support an additional 40a service dedicated to charging the car.

On the horizon are commercial-grade rapid car chargers which aim to reduce the charge time to under an hour… maybe as little as three minutes! Also exciting are solar carports, which offer solar-powered electric vehicle charging for anyone who cares to visit it.

A Solar Road Ahead

EVs are obviously in their infancy, but with high gas prices a lasting reality and the environmental and geopolitical impacts of oil dependency being felt more than ever before, the push towards a more renewable transportation sector is inevitable.

Though nothing can beat biking, walking, or sailing to work, an EV powered by the clean energy of the sun is a pretty great option! Look for more from us as we follow the evolution of this exciting technology.

The 18.3kw solar electric array on Supercuts’ Brewer location is expected to provide 100% of the energy efficient building’s electric loads!

On busy Wilson street in Brewer, perhaps the most striking building is the new Supercuts, which boasts a bold architectural design and a 18.3kw grid-tied solar electric system. According to building owner Carol Epstein, this is all by design.

“I wanted it to be visible, a statement, an advertisement – so everyone could see the panels,” she says in a Bangor Daily News article on the project. “We could have done a flat roof and put panels on a little stand, but we really wanted to show off the panels, so we did this big, pitched roof.”

In addition to making a strong environmental statement, economic conditions were right to make the Supercuts project a reality. With a 30% federal tax grant, accelerated depreciation which amounted to nearly another 30%, and a $2,000 state rebate, the project was reduced to close to a third of its original cost… Add to this a lower than ever cost of installing panels (around $4.5/watt installed for this project), and you have a very powerful case for solar electricity!

David M. Fitzpatrick of the Bangor Daily reported in a special section:

When Epstein Commercial Real Estate entered into talks with Supercuts, Epstein found the company’s vision of energy efficiency a good match for hers, and she and her team took the challenge of creating the new store very seriously. “We looked at their electric bills for three of their typical stores around New England to figure out how much electricity they use,” Epstein said. “We sized the system to that.”

Epstein Commercial Real Estate has been pushing for energy efficiency in several of its properties in the past four years, doing such things as installing energy-efficient lighting inside and outside, increasing insulation, and adding timers and motion sensors. “We’ve really looked at the whole spectrum with heating, lighting, air conditioning, insulation on all our properties,” Epstein said. “I think we’ve put in close to a thousand new lighting fixtures.”

… In addition to the solar panels, the building is very green in its design. It features big windows for plenty of natural light, low-watt fluorescent lighting, supplemental LED lighting, and many other features. As for the solar array, a remote control that looks like an electronic Rolodex allows you to flip through data screens that report the electricity being generated, or what was generated that day, week, month, and so on.

“Our tenant is very excited about it,” Epstein said. “They have a number of SuperCuts all around New England, and … they were designing this building — we were all designing it — to be their showcase in the area for SuperCuts.”

Read the complete Bangor Daily News special section, or another article which headlined the Business section, Here comes the sun: Cost, rebates making solar an option.

And of course, be sure to check out Supercuts next time you’re in Brewer. ReVision staffers report that nothing feels quite the same as a blow dry when you know the power is from the sun!

A few months ago we talked about how Efficiency Maine was leading the nation by creating low-interest Maine PACE loans to help homeowners finance energy efficiency projects including weatherization, heating system improvements, and solar hot water projects.

Nearly seven months later the loans are finally becoming available! Efficiency Maine has hammered out the details and we’re able to share the specifics of the program with you.

Key points on PACE:

• Minimum loan amount of $6,500, maximum loan $15,000
• Energy improvements must result in an overall home energy savings of 25% to qualify
• Energy savings is based on modeling performed by a qualified home energy auditor
• You must live in a town that has passed a PACE ordinance
• Fixed rate of 4.99%, 5, 10, or 15 year term, no pre-payment penalty or closing fees
• Loan is a junior mortgage and assumable (i.e. if you sell your home the loan can go with it)

How Do I Apply?

An online PACE application is now live on Efficiency Maine’s website as well as a program FAQ.

Note that the first step is get an energy audit done. ReVision Energy can recommend an auditor in your area if you’re interested – just contact us.

So, What Does PACE Mean for Solar?

As we mentioned recently with the launch of Biddeford Saving’s loan for solar hot water projects, the beauty of financing a solar hot water system is that the cost of loan payments is generally less than the equivalent cost of fossil fuel energy. In other words, they save you money from day one!

And, while the $1,000 Efficiency Maine solar hot water rebate would go towards paying down the loan principal, you are still eligible for the 30% federal tax credit when you finance solar hot water with PACE.

The only tricky part is that solar hot water’s energy savings benefits must be accurately modeled by your home energy auditor to ensure the system meets the 25% energy savings criteria (possibly in tandem with other work) that makes it qualify for a PACE loan. Due to the way the modeling is structured, solar hot water systems will be much more likely to qualify for a PACE loan than photovoltaic (solar electric).

Below is a video from the MABEP Conference 2010, when Fortunat Mueller of ReVision explains how 1BTU of Solar can Save 4 BTUs of Oil:

Want to Pursue PACE?

As part of our commitment to a full-service renewable energy experience, ReVision’s staff has been following the development of PACE and are intimately familiar with the process of applying for the loans. We also have strong connections in the energy auditing industry to streamline the process for you.

If the idea of finally being able to finance energy efficiency makes you ready to finally go solar, contact us today and we’ll be happy to help you get started.

Which towns have passed PACE?

Efficiency Maine reports 41% of Maine’s population lives in a town with a PACE ordinance – almost half a million people! 57 towns have passed PACE so far, including:

Albion, Alfred, Arrowsic, Arundel, Auburn, Augusta, Bangor, Bath, Belfast, Biddeford, Bowdoinham, Bradley, Brewer, Brooksville, Bucksport, Cape Elizabeth, China, Cumberland, Dayton, Dover-Foxcroft, Falmouth, Fayette, Fort Kent, Freeport, Gray, Hallowell, Hampden, Harpswell, Houlton, Kennebunk, Lewiston, Lincoln, Lisbon, Mechanic Falls, North Haven, Old Town, Orono, Phippsburg, Portland, Presque Isle, Richmond, Rockland, Saco, Scarborough, South Berwick, South Portland, Strong, Topsham, Vassalboro, Vinalhaven, Waterboro, Waterville, West Bath, Westbrook, Winslow, Winthrop, and Yarmouth.

In process, but not yet passed are:

Brunswick, Eastport, Unity, Buckfield, York, Old Orchard Beach, Kittery, Windham and New Gloucester.

If your town still needs to pass an ordinance, we recommend contacting your town officials to urge them to adopt the ordinance – Efficiency Maine has several PACE model ordinances (PDF) available that make these loans available to town residents risk-free to the town.

More PACE Resources

• PACE – Rules of the Road and Program Info (PDF)
• PACE – Participating Municipalities (PDF)
• PACE – Program Brochure (PDF)
• PACE – Advisory Notice (PDF)

The Maine PACE Loans program was seeded by an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Efficiency Maine won the competitive grant to capitalize, administer and market the loans in a 2009 proposal. However, state law requires that all towns pass an ordinance enabling PACE before local homeowners become eligible for the loans.

Bowdoin College’s 48 flat plate solar hot water collectors will provide more than half of the hot water used annually at their Thorne Dining Hall

With the installation of 48 flat plate solar hot water collectors, ReVision recently completed a solar hot water system that will provide more than half of the hot water used at Bowdoin College’s Thorne Dining Hall.

For Bowdoin College, who seeks to become carbon neutral by 2020, the savings of over 90,000 lbs of C02 emissions per year is an attractive benefit on top of the clean energy heating.

The Portland Press Herald recently ran a story lauding Bowdoin’s efforts:

The [carbon neutrality] program is based on a conviction that the planet is threatened by man-made climate change and that college campuses can take a leadership role in helping to stabilize the atmosphere.

… The first step in becoming carbon neutral is defining a starting point, a carbon footprint. Schools tally their heating, gasoline and power bills. They conduct inventories and use verifiable assumptions and calculations to estimate their greenhouse gas emissions for a given date.

Bowdoin determined that the school released 24,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2008. The biggest sources came from electricity use, 44 percent, followed by heating and vehicles, 42 percent. The rest came largely from employee commuting, transmission line losses and travel.

… Beyond changing technology, Bowdoin also wants to use its educational mandate to change behavior. To meet the 2020 goal, it says, everyone on campus must share an awareness of carbon neutrality. That means developing energy-saving habits, such as shutting down computers and turning off lights.

The 48 flat plate solar hot water collectors will produce over 584,000,000 BTUs of thermal energy each year, or a savings of roughly 8,800 therms of natural gas annually. In the summertime it will mean significantly reduced runtime of a boiler dedicated specifically to Thorne Dining Hall, while in the winter the hot water supply is assisted with a central campus boiler that also provides space heat.

Possibly as exciting as the energy savings itself is the way that Bowdoin is creating fun, interactive tools for analyzing energy use and develop a culture of students, faculty, and staff who are energy conscious.

Check out this Flash-based energy production/analysis tool:

The transition to a clean energy economy is as much about changing our own attitudes towards energy as it is getting serious about fossil fuel alternatives. We’re thrilled to see Bowdoin College leading the way!

More Photos from our Schools/Nonprofits Photo Gallery:

Greg Rossell’s solar powered boat house will provide more than 2/3 of the power used by his home and boat shop.

We love to catalog the stories of our customers – what motivates them to go solar, and why now. This time we’re excited to have Greg Rossell, an active boat builder and board member of WERU, share his story in his own words:

I suspect everyone has a had a different path as to how they decided to go solar. We have long been interested in solar – although over the years the “solar energy” we used was mostly tied up in the firewood we burned to heat our home and boat shop. We became more interested in electricity when in 2004 we purchased a Prius – just before gasoline spiked to 4 dollars a gallon.

Over the ensuing years we have followed the politics of energy – how it is produced and what the actual cost is. All the time we kept eyeing each electrical device we owned with a chary eye – giving the energy hogs the pink slip and replacing them with more friendly models. Solar had a lot of appeal – especially compared to the alternatives. But we dawdled – after all, we were still hooked to the grid and we weren’t using that much power…

What tipped the scales for us was a week long trip we took last summer in a solar electric launch in Ontario. While the boat had a back up generator, it was rarely used it as the solar panels produced all the power we needed to cruise with 6 adults, 2 babies and a dog. All in silence, without fumes, or vibration. This was definitely cool and practical.

Upon our return, we began to do more research. And fortunately, while we had “dawdled” the technology had been continually improving. Solar panels became more efficient as did the micro-inverters that change the DC power to AC. Perhaps as important for us was that we could have a grid tied system where we could send any extra unused energy onto the electrical grid while banking energy credits. We would also avoid the hassle of dealing with batteries and all their cost and maintenance. And, there was the matter of energy credits and rebates that made the investment more affordable for us!

The next task was to look for someone to walk us through the process (and hopefully) do the installation. We decided on ReVision Energy for a number of reasons. One reason is that they are local – many of the folks who are installers are our neighbors. We knew if there was a problem there would always be someone handy to deal with it. They have done plenty of solar arrays in the state so they know the conditions in Maine and what can be realistically expected from a system. They are also business members of WERU radio which indicates that they invest in their community.

The entire experience went like clockwork – from the initial evaluation by Hans Albee, his patient answering of my multitude of questions, the crew’s speedy, clean and efficient installation of the photovoltaic panels, and Jennifer Albee’s technical guidance — walking us through the paperwork involved with getting registered as a energy provider with Central Maine Power and the application for the energy investment rebates.

In the end we went with a system that will provide 2/3 of our home and shop electricity demand. We now have a CMP double meter system that records both the energy from “away” we use as well as the power we put into the grid. It’s a most practical manner of keeping track of those electrons but I have to admit I do miss seeing our old familiar meter running merrily backwards – I could have watched that all day.

Thank you for your story, Greg! Be sure to check out the March/April edition of Wooden Boat magazine which features a shot of this system.

One of the most popular questions at ReVision Energy lately has been “What state rebates are available in New Hampshire?” And no wonder – the residential photovoltaic rebate has come and gone, the solar hot water rebate is on a sliding scale, and the commercial rebates require some modeling to calculate.

Here’s a short guide to the rebates currently available and how they affect the economics of a solar energy installation.

UPDATED March 28, 2012 – Rebates change quickly so contact us for details on current availability.  Our residential solar rebates page is also always kept up to date.

Residential Solar Hot Water

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission offers a sliding state rebate based on the production of the system, as modeled in MMBTU / year. Here’s a chart expressing the varying levels of the rebate at different levels of performance:

For a typical residential project installed at a cost of around $11,000, the state + 30% federal rebate incentives amount to $4,800, roughly half the cost of the system.

In a typical home that heats water with oil, a solar hot water system will save around 300 gallons of oil a year. Assuming oil costs are around $3.70gallon, that results in a simple payback of around 6 years!

What Happened to Residential Photovoltaic Rebates?

Due to overwhelming demand, the New Hampshire photovoltaic rebate program has stopped reserving funds outright and is adding new residential solar electric applications to a waitlist. The program is funded through the Renewable Energy Fund (REF), a fund supported by compliance payments made by electrical service providers who cannot meet renewable portfolio standard (RPS) obligations through the purchase of renewable energy credits.

The amount of these compliance payments varies widely year-to-year, and the PUC cautions that “The PUC will continue to accept new applications … and will create a waiting list for applicants …  If and when funding for the program is replenished, those on the waiting list will receive rebate funds … on a first-come, first-served basis.” The earliest that any funding might again be available is July 2012. See: http://www.puc.nh.gov/Sustainable%20Energy/RenewableEnergyRebates-SREG.html

Rebates for Business

New Hampshire’s program commercial solar rebate program makes $1,000,000 available to solar thermal and solar electric projects for businesses, schools, municipalities, apartment buildings – basically any structure not eligible under the residential program.

The rebate structure is more straightforward than the residential program:

• Photovoltaic (Solar Electric): $0.80/Watt up to $50,000 (or 25% of the project cost, whatever is less)
• Solar Thermal rebate: $0.07 per kBTU/year up to $50,000 (or 25% of the project cost, whatever is less)

Like the residential solar hot water program, a RETScreen modeling analysis is used to calculate the kBTU/year performance of the solar hot water systems. Solar electric is fixed based on the nominal wattage.

Between the state rebate and current federal solar incentives, 2012 is an extremely appealing year to go solar if you’re a business.

Let’s take, for example, a medium scale solar thermal project for a business that uses a lot of hot water – a hotel or retirement home, perhaps – that is currently heating water with oil.

We’ll propose a system of 20 flat plate hot water collectors and several super-insulated tanks that will produce over 182,500,000 BTUs/year of clean thermal energy. We’ll imagine that the system will save 2,300 gallons of #2 oil per year, a result of both reduced oil use and greatly reducing standby losses of the oil boiler in the summertime.

Assuming this hot water system costs around $100,000 gross to install, the fuel savings alone will pay for the cost of the system within its first decade of operation.

However, now there is an exciting suite of rebates to apply:

$100,000 gross installed cost
($30,000) federal tax credit
($28,900) accelerated depreciation – avoided taxes over 5 years thanks to lowered net income, assumes 34% marginal tax bracket
($12,775) state rebate – $0.07/modeled kBtu/year
$28,325 net investment – less than a third of the total cost of the project!

Within this new context, that same solar hot water system will pay for itself within two years thanks to the fuel savings.

The wasteful boiler imagined in this formula is not unique – over 750,000 buildings in New Hampshire and Maine use oil for heating, and over $2 billion is shipped out of the local economy to pay for the millions of gallons of liquid fuels used annually. With cost projections for oil, propane, and electricity set to rise, and a strong suite of renewable energy rebates here today, the time has never been better to invest in solar.

Contact ReVision Energy for more information about both the commercial and residential solar rebates or visit our website to schedule a free site evaluation.