SMCC’s SEA Director John Brautigam standing before a suite of solar energy systems recently installed by ReVision Energy.

ReVision recently wrapped installation of a suite of solar systems at Southern Maine Community College’s Sustainable Energy Alternatives (SEA) Center.

The SEA Center is a major part of SMCC’s efforts to become a regional center for education and training on renewable energy and sustainable building practices. The building is equipped with cutting-edge professional equipment and state-of-the-art educational tools designed to help students understand theories of building science including air infiltration, insulation issues, and thermal properties of building materials to help equip them for a career in energy efficiency and/or renewable energy.

To showcase the variety of solar energy installations likely to be encountered, SMCC had ReVision install two solar hot water systems, one with evacuated tubes and the other with flat plate collectors, as well as a modest photovoltaic (solar electric) array. All of the “guts” of the system – pipe run, tank, wiring, etc. – is on display and labeled so students can understand how it works and observe it in practice. The systems also feature robust web-based data monitoring options that will be viewable by both students and the public.

ReVision has had the pleasure of working with an SMCC Electric Engineering student, Melanie Janarelli, as an intern this summer, who helped install the system. Director John Brautigam is featured in one of our upcoming Solar Road Tour episodes, so stay tuned!

More Photos:

In the second installment of our new series The Solar Road Tour, Fred continues his adventures in Freeport, meeting with Beth Edmonds of the Freeport Public Library and Melissa Coleman, author of the new memoir This Life is in Your Hands who lives in a LEED Platinum home.

We continue on the road for our next show on September 2nd, when we’ll be visiting the net-zero apartment building of Paul Ledman in Portland, Maine.

Fred Greenhalgh from ReVision has been out and about touring solar energy systems up and down the Maine and NH coasts, talking to people about solar and showcasing how they work. The result? A new web video series called The Solar Road Tour.

In Episode 1, we make it up to beautiful Freeport, Maine on a day of unlimited sunshine to see the solar atop Gritty McDuff’s and LL Bean.

Stay tuned for Episode 2, due out on August 19, where we visit the Freeport Library to see how they’re educating the public about energy efficiency, and tour the LEED Platinum home of author Melissa Coleman. Solar Road Tour is an ongoing series and we plan to have two short videos a month from now until the end of the year.

The VillageSoup writes about several new solar energy systems installed by ReVision Energy in the Unity area, including the MOFGA fairgrounds, Unity College, and a private home.

ReVision recently completed work on a Unity residential project, is working on a project with Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s “Red Barn” in Unity, and a hot water system at Unity College’s new dormitory, Terrahaus.

In addition to promoting renewable energy and encouraging the transition away from fossil fuels, the projects are especially relevant for the ReVision Energy team at its Liberty office, as six of the 11 employees are graduates of Unity College.

“This technology is something we are all passionate about,” said John Luft, general manager of ReVision Energy’s Liberty location, in a press release. “Being a graduate of Unity College, it takes on a special significance to be working in this industry because Unity places such an emphasis on becoming more and more environmentally friendly. Plus, working ‘close to home’ is special in its own kind of way.”

Unity College’s Terrahaus project will be the first American college residence with many environmentally-friendly features that will allow it to meet the Passive House standard. Among those features will be solar hot water.

More information and full article at Village Soup website.

Forrest Lowe’s combination domestic hot water and pool heating system uses 6 flat plate collectors to deliver ample heat to his pool in the summertime (Photo courtesy Forrest Lowe)

When Forrest Lowe and his wife were seeking their perfect retirement home, they knew they wanted a quiet spot by the water. Longtime Brunswick residents, they fell in love with a house on Coffin Ice Pond, which years ago supplied ice for the town. What Forrest didn’t expect, however, was to also fall in love with the pool that came with the house.

“At first I was lukewarm about the pool,” Forrest says, “But ultimately it grew on me, though we knew we had to find another way to heat it because the propane heater that came with it was smelly, and extremely expensive to operate.”

A Better Way to Heat a Pool

While most pools are heated by propane, a small but growing cadre of pool owners are harvesting Maine’s abundant solar energy to open their pools earlier and keep them open longer into fall. The same solar thermal technology that heats domestic hot water can help heat a pool, as Forrest learned from his friend Rick Williams, who recently had ReVision Energy install a solar hot water system on his home in Yarmouth.

“Rick introduced me to [ReVision Principal and Engineer] Fortunat, who was great through the whole process. He helped me come up with a 5 flat plate solar hot water collector system, which I ended up expanding to 6. I wanted an overkill system because I wanted our pool to heat up quickly and stay hot longer.”

Hot Water, By Design

Part of the challenge of keeping Forrest’s pool warm is that he is reluctant to use a pool cover, which he finds cumbersome for one person to deploy. As such, the pool loses heat overnight, a reality that’s compensated by the outstanding performance of his solar water heating system. Whenever the sun is shining, Forrest’s flat plate collectors heat up his home’s 105 gallon solar storage tank before dumping excess heat into his pool.

“I am amazed at how effective this system is at heating the pool,” he says. “It only takes a little while to get the domestic hot water up to temperature and then starts dumping into the pool. On a nice sunny day you can feel the warm water pouring out the jets!”

A Great Solar Season

Forrest is thrilled at how the solar hot water combo system allows him to extend the season of his pool as well as enjoy it more during the season (there have been a number of days when the pool approached 90 degrees… balmy!). On a good sunny day he’ll see more than a 4 degree rise in the pool – no small feat considering the pool’s 25,000 gallon capacity. He loves the free fuel from the sun and the satisfaction that comes from clean solar energy. On the domestic hot water side, he notes that his boiler rarely fires in the summer, and estimates saving at least one oil delivery per season.

“To me this is not just about saving money,” Forrest says, “It’s about avoiding pollution and getting independent of fossil fuels.”

And, of course, enjoying his pool. Enjoy the sun, Forrest!

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.

Cliff Babkirk’s 5.4kw grid tied solar electric array will nearly completely offset the electric load of his air source heat pump, his home’s primary source of heat

Energy conservation had been on Cliff Babkirk’s mind for years, but it reached a head in 2008 when he received an invoice from his heating oil company for $5,000 for a pre-paid contract. “I knew I had to do something different,” he says, “I wanted to get off oil for environmental reasons already but now I had economic reasons too.”

His search for an alternative heating system initially lead him to geothermal, though quotes of up to $50,000 for a retrofit installation made the project uneconomical. Instead, he learned of an similar, but significantly less costly solution – the Acadia air source heat pump.

Immense Savings with Electric Heat

Made by a Maine company, the Acadia offered many of the same benefits as a geothermal system, and integrated with most of Babkirk’s existing system – including his air handler and duct work. He had the unit installed before the 2008 heating season, and estimates it saved him $3,200 after the first year alone!

Of course, the drop in heating oil costs were offset, in part, by a rise in electricity costs to run the heat pump. Babkirk also had an energy audit done and learned that his basement and attic were two big culprits for energy loss. So, for his next step, he set about to better insulate the trouble spots in his house, and then to offset the electric load of his heat pump with solar electricity.

In 2009 he added 2″ of rigid foam insulation to his basement walls (,) added closed cell sprayed foam to his rim joists, and undertook some serious air sealing work. In 2010, he pulled out much of his home’s existing attic insulation and replaced it with super-dense R49 blow-in cellulose insulation. Finally, in 2011, he added grid-tied photovoltaic installed by ReVision Energy to offset his electric usage. His initial goal was to drop his load of 16,000 kWh a year to around 10,000 kWh a year – his electricity baseline prior to the installation of the air source heat pump.

Solar Exceeding Expectations

“Our goal was to be producing around 500 kWh/month with solar and so far the system has exceeded our expectations,” Babkirk says, “The best part is that the energy I’ve paid for today with my solar panels is never subject to a rate change. I’ve locked in the cost of a portion of my electricity for the next 20-25 years at a rate below current utility prices. In addition, through the benefits of net-metering, CMP gives me a credit on my bill for excess electricity produced by the array that I don’t use.”

Cliff is a big fan of data monitoring, and has been using The Energy Detective (TED) to monitor his household’s electric use since 2008. He was immensely satisfied to send us this photo of his household’s electric use soon after the PV system was installed:

More Solar Power on the Horizon

While he’s made great progress already, Cliff plans to take his 30% federal tax credit from his first PV array and use it to buy more panels. “My goal is to get to 50% of my energy use being offset by PV,” he says. He and his wife plan to stay in their current home – overlooking a pond in Sanford, Maine – well into retirement, and so the idea of getting control over their utility costs is immensely comforting.

“We like the idea of reliable systems and predictable costs,” he says, “Currently our oil boiler is nothing but a fancy hot water system and a backup source of heat when we lose power or should the Acadia system require maintenance… And once we can find an alternative backup heat source I like even better, we will finally have a fossil-free house.”

In the meantime, Cliff can expect to generate over 6,576 kilowatt hours of clean, renewable electricity annually, while offsetting roughly 8,812 lbs. of CO2 emissions that would be generated from coal, natural gas, or liquid fuel power plants.

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!