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:

ReVision Energy co-founder Phil Coupe speaks at a press conference held to announce a new report on the efficacy of solar hot water in Maine.

In a press conference last Thursday Environment Maine released a report finding that Mainers can save millions of gallons of oil a year with solar hot water.

“We need to do everything we can to get Maine off oil, and installing solar hot water systems is one of the no-brainers. We have long had the technology and know-how to harness the zero-cost heat of the sun to produce hot water, while at the same time cutting pollution and putting people to work in our communities. And more than ever we have a workforce that is ready to install these affordable solar systems on roofs across the state,” said Environment Maine Field Associate Nathaniel Meyer, speaking in front of Senator Justin Alfond’s East End home, which has a rooftop solar hot water system.

ReVision Energy co-founder Phil Coupe continued. “Solar hot water is one of the safest investments you can make – with relatively small upfront investments, the financial and environmental return is guaranteed,” he said. “Maine is ripe for this technology. We get 33% more sun than Germany, the world leader in solar installations. On a sunny 20-degree day, a solar hot water system can generate water that’s 130 degrees – water that’s too hot to shower in.”

See video coverage from NECN:

Video also provided by WCSH:

And several news articles on this important story!

• Bloomberg Businessweek
• Bangor Daily News
• Portland Press Herald
• Solar Thermal Magazine
• Forbes

From our photo gallery:

We’re pleased to be able to show, not tell, the story of Suzanne Huard. A recent retiree, Suzanne fulfilled a long-time solar dream with the installation of an evacuated tube solar hot water system and grid-tied photovoltaic array on her home.

ReVision commissioned NowOrNeverMedia, as part of their “Green Screen TV” series, to cover the story of two solar installations in the middle of a blustery month.

Check out the video on YouTube:

We heard back from Suzanne about the project. She’s pleased to report that “things are going great … I can say now that our daily usage of hot water went down 16+% from our Jan/Feb bill to the prior Dec/Jan bill and the residential electricity went down 11+% (they are metered separately).”

Photos From Our Residential Solar Photo Gallery:

For more installations, see our Solar Projects Map

The 7.5KW grid-tied solar electric system on Black Dog Car Wash’s Dover location will save the business over $1,400/yr in electric costs.

How do you stand-out in the crowded world of car washes? For Black Dog Car Wash, it’s been dedication to an exceptional customer experience, state-of-the-art-facilities, and a commitment to the environment.

With water and energy conservation, pollution prevention, and biodegradeable soap options already in place, Black Dog decided that clean solar energy was the way to take their new facility in Dover, NH to the next level.

“Solar is Green Technology that our customers can see,” says Black Dog Car Wash’s owner, Jeremiah Gage, “We have been integrating green technology for years, but our customers rarely see these improvements that lie behind closed doors.”

Black Dog’s growth coincided with a great new rebate from the state of New Hampshire: an incentive payment of $1.00 per watt for solar electric systems. Combined with the 30% federal tax credit (which in 2011 can be taken as a treasury grant), Black Dog found they could save over $15,000 – more than half the cost of the system – as well as being eligible to take additional tax credits in the form of accelerated depreciation.

In addition to saving the car wash an estimated $1,440 per year, the system will offset 12,250 pounds of C02 emissions. The new facility also boasts energy efficiency lighting fixtures, which further reduce the facility’s environmental impact.  “We feel [solar] is what a successful business like Black Dog Car Wash should be doing to help reduce our environmental impact,” Gage continues, “Our goal is to integrate solar at all Black Dog Car Wash locations.”

Interested to see what a solar-powered car wash feels like? Stop by 887 Central Avenue in Dover, New Hampshire – in front of Petco and Bed Bath & Beyond. Or learn more about the car wash voted “Best in New Hampshire” at http://www.blackdogcarwash.com.

More Photos from Our Commercial Solar Photo Gallery:

For more installations, see our Solar Projects Map

Melissa Coleman, a freelance writer who lives in the Platinum LEED-rated Cranberry Ridge Home, has launched a new blog called the Bright Minded Home.  The blog, which has a companion column in Maine Home + Design magazine, offers an investigation into the art of creating healthy, beautiful, and energy efficient homes.

For a taste of what the  blog and column will feature, here’s a selection of an interview between Melissa and Keith Collins, the owner of the BrightBuilt Barn in Rockport, Maine:

Q: What’s been the most successful component of the building?
A: Some people imagine you need a PhD to live in an energy-efficient, solar home. In fact, we’ve had zero problems with the solar photovoltaic (PV) and thermal hot water systems, and are putting about 5,000 kilowatt hours of solar electricity back into the grid each year.

More at: http://brightmindedhome.blogspot.com/2011/01/qa-with-keith-collins.html

About Cranberry Ridge

Photo Courtesy / © meyersphoto.com

We love a green building column being written by someone living in a green building – talk about an inside perspective!

Cranberry Ridge was the fourth home in the country to receive Platinum LEED designation and the first in the Northeast. Located near Wolfe’s Neck State Park in Freeport, Maine, it features solar PV and thermal, radiant heat flooring and passive solar siting.

ReVision installed the 2.4kw grid-tied solar electric system, which saves the home over $500 worth of electric bills each year, and a 90 tube Apricus solar hot water system, which produces over 24,000,000 BTUs each year (offsetting over 3 tons of C02 emissions).

2009 statistics of the home’s performance are available at: http://www.writehands.com/cranberryridge/index.html

If you like Melissa’s writing, be sure to keep a look out for her upcoming memoir about growing up during the 1970s back-to-the-land movement, This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone.  It will be published by HarperCollins on April 12, 2011.

As the principal of Emerald Builders, Reggie Lebel is well aware of how the decisions made when building a home dictate its energy use for decades to come. So, when it was time to build his own home, Reggie says “Solar was easy.”

“Solar hot water and space heat was a great way to get greater energy independence right on our own property,” he continues. “We chose Revision Energy because of the company’s reputation and continued commitment to their product, their vast knowledge of the systems, and their friendliness and patience with our endless questions and ideas.”

Helping the system to make fiscal as well as environmental and security sense was over $6,000 of state and federal incentives.

The system consists of a large (90-evacuated tube) solar hot water system that provides 100% of annual domestic hot water, as well as a portion of solar space heat. The system is backed up with a Thermolec electric boiler, which opens up the possibility of adding a photovoltaic system down the road for a completely net zero home.

The Experience

“[Project Manager] John Capron and the crew were a blast to have on site, they were meticulous with every aspect,” Reggie says. “They went over the systems and components and schedule with us routinely, and were very concerned about getting the job done right, and on time – you could tell that everyone really cared about the product.”

While a solar space heating system is enormously complex to design and schedule, the actual crews are only on-site for a few days. Once commissioned, the system will provide clean water courtesy of the sun for decades with little to no maintenance.

Living with Solar Hot Water and Space Heat

“The system does everything that Revision designed it to do,” Reggie says, “The house is very evenly heated, and routinely heated by the solar hot water system.”

For now, and for decades to come, his system will generate over 16,000,000 BTUs annually, offsetting over 4,000 lbs of C02 emissions – enough to make anyone breathe a little easier!

Terry McIlveen recently reported that he is “amazed on sub zero days the temp on the collectors will hit 130-140 … It is high enough to offset demand for radiant heating.”

The idea of heating your home with solar may sound like a dream in the tough climate of New England, but with smart design, a well-insulated home, and reasonable expectations, solar can indeed carry a portion of your winter heating load.

A recent Mother Earth News article profiled one of our solar space heating customers, Terry McIlveen, and asked several questions of resident engineer and company co-founder Fortunat Mueller.

Scott Gibson writes:

When Terry McIlveen built his home in Maine in 1997, he made the unusual choice to install radiant floor heating. “People thought I was nuts,” he says. However, since that time, radiant floor heat has become increasingly popular, and it’s easy to understand why. This type of heating system works by pumping hot water — or water and propylene glycol (antifreeze) — through a system of tubing in the floor. That means houses using this heating system get warmer from the floor up. In the winter, there are no cold floors underfoot — instead the floor is the warmest part of the home.

McIlveen soon discovered an additional benefit — radiant floor heat is a great match with solar hot water. If you already heat your home with hot water, it’s just one more step to heat that water with solar energy. In the spring of 2010, McIlveen hired ReVision Energy, a southern Maine solar company, to install rooftop solar collectors to help heat his home and produce his domestic hot water, thereby cutting his fuel oil consumption by up to 25 percent each year.

The system cost $20,000, so McIlveen chose to finance it through a loan. His exact savings on fuel each year will depend on how much he has to run the heater in the winter, as well as the ever-changing price of fuel oil — but he knows that if he saves just two fuel tanks a year, he can cover his loan payments.

Using solar hot water for space heating won’t supply 100 percent of your heating needs. You’ll still need a supplemental heat source, so you won’t be able to scrap your furnace or boiler. But in new construction, that supplemental heat source can be much less expensive (a smaller system, for example). However, under the right conditions, a solar thermal system can replace a significant portion of conventional energy sources for both space heating and domestic hot water.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/solar-hot-water-zm0z11zphe.aspx#ixzz1ByEFseL2

You can also see Terry McIlveen’s home when it was featured on WMTW in mid-2010.

The Bangor Daily News and several local weekly papers carried a scathing story this week on a set of poorly performing renewable energy systems installed on behalf of the Maine State Housing Authority with funds from a federal DHHS grant.

John Christie reports:

To help poor families save on electricity and heating oil, MSHA contracted with a vendor to install solar panels to heat water at 10 homes from Belgrade to Rockland. The names of the recipients are not revealed by MSHA because most are receiving public assistance…

Of the 10, the report found six were poorly installed, including one where the solar panels were put in upside down, four where the panels were not oriented properly toward the sun, and one where trees blocked the panels…

The contractor, now out of business, had been reliable on previous projects, [Dale McCormick, the director of MSHA] said, but in this case “he got overextended.”

Read the rest of the article here

ReVision Energy joins the group of citizens surprised and disappointed to learn that solar collectors were installed irresponsibly, perhaps fraudulently.

We would further like to remind people that the article points out problems with an incompetent (and now defunct) contractor, not a problem with the fundamental technology of solar hot water.

Professional Solar Hot Water

Residential solar hot water systems are an established, proven technology that when designed and installed by skilled professionals can save a household more than 300 gallons of oil per year while eliminating more than 5,000 lbs. of CO2 emissions.

With 450,000 Maine homes heated with oil, and unnecessarily burning millions of gallons of oil to make domestic hot water when the sun is shining, it is imperative that the state continue to support the installation of high quality solar hot water systems.

The Steps to a Professional Solar Hot Water Installation

Above is an example system design for a solar hot water system integrated with a domestic oil boiler.

To ensure that a solar hot water system will deliver maximum possible energy savings, the process begins with a rigorous site evaluation, then moves to custom system design, which is then followed by professional installation by a team of highly trained, certified solar technicians.

Critical aspects of the site evaluation include a compass reading of roof orientation (acceptable range is 155 to 245 degrees magnetic), an analysis of annual shading where the collectors will be mounted, and an assessment of the existing heating system to determine solar compatibility.

One key minimum requirement of any solar installation in Maine is that the collector location have an unshaded solar window of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. year round to justify a system investment.

If the solar window is occluded by shade from trees or other nearby objects, it should be recommended that the homeowner cut trees or find a new location for collector placement. When there is not a viable location on the property, it is the solar contractor’s responsibility to inform the client that solar is not a good option.

Track Record

Since the last of MSHA’s systems were installed in 2008, ReVision Energy have installed more than 2,000 high quality solar energy systems throughout Maine and New Hampshire. We welcome a rigorous assessment of these installations to prove that when done correctly, solar hot water is a cost-effective remedy to reduce fossil fuel energy consumption and the associated emissions. We have a large stable of enthusiastic customer testimonials lauding the energy savings and fossil fuel reductions they experience as a result of their systems.

We are also be willing to assess the systems that were installed for MSHA and develop a project proposal to fix the systems that are broken and decommission the systems that were installed in shade.

Why Solar Energy Systems Are Critical to Our Renewable Energy Future

On a per capita basis, Maine is the most oil dependent state in the nation, and we have the highest CO2 emissions in New England (despite our pristine environmental reputation).

Every year, we export $2 billion out of our state economy to support our liquid fossil fuel habit. These fundamental structural problems, which leave Mainers dangerously exposed to oil price volatility and supply disruptions, deserve every effective remedy that the citizenry and its government can apply.

Perhaps counter intuitively, Maine has a robust solar energy resource (best in New England and better than half the U.S.) that can be effectively harnessed to reduce fuel consumption.

As John Christie candidly reports, these technologies can be poorly installed, as can any other piece of equipment or home improvement. However, when designed and installed by professionals solar is a cost-effective, greenhouse-gas reducing technology that helps make Mainers more energy secure. That is a future we can all look forward to.