by jboullion | May 6, 2008 | Uncategorized
From an article by Linda McAlpine on GM Today:
WAUKESHA – From the faux-slate shingles made of recycled baby diapers and rooftop solar panels to its engineered wood floors, the house being built at 1512 Rock Ridge Way in Waukesha is anything but traditional.
The 2,100 square-foot house is the 2008 Wisconsin Trend Home and when completed later this summer will house the latest in energy-saving and environmentally-friendly technology.
Starting at the top, Tim O’Brien, of O’Brien Homes, Waukesha, builder of the home, walked through some of its cutting edge highlights.
“The shingles, which look like slate, are made of recycled baby diapers, tires and plastic bottles,” he said. “Because they’re light, they don’t need the structure to support them so you need less wood. You’re doing something good for the environment by using product made from recycled material. They also have a 50-year life span.”
According to Lisa Schaal, solar site assessor for Sol Power, Milwaukee, the 20 solar panels on the roof enable the house to use about 500 or less kilowatts per month, compared with the average home electricity usage of 800 kilowatts per month.
Dave Schwabenlender, of Arch Electric, LLC of Plymouth, said the panels will generate power even on cloudy days.
by jboullion | Apr 14, 2008 | Uncategorized
From a press release issued by Focus on Energy:
KENOSHA, Wis. — Charles Heide of Kenosha is the latest Wisconsin resident to discover the benefits of clean, renewable energy, including reduced energy costs and the satisfaction that comes from helping preserve the environment. His recently completed solar electric and wind systems feed surplus power back to the grid, resulting in monthly energy bill credits.
In June 2007, Heide installed a large 35-kilowatt (kW) wind turbine and in September2007, he installed a 10.5 kW solar electric system. The projects were completed with the help of nearly $65,000 in grants from Focus on Energy, Wisconsin’s energy efficiency and renewable energy program.
Each year, Heide’s wind and solar electric systems will generate more than 87,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power eight typical Wisconsin homes. The renewable energy produced by these systems will offset the burning of 44 tons of coal and the release of more than 100 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and a major contributor to global climate change.
by jboullion | Mar 20, 2007 | Uncategorized
Fossil Fuel Watch
Vol. 6, Number 5, March 20, 2007
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
Awhile back, I wrote a column which was highly critical of using payback analysis to figure out whether installing a solar hot water system on one’s house makes economic sense. In almost every example you can imagine, the payback period for today’s solar installations ranges between long and forever. For my system, which started operating in January 2006, payback will be achieved in a mere 19 years using today’s energy prices, though by the time 2025 rolls around, half of Florida might be under water and the rest of the country out of natural gas.
What message does payback analysis convey to the average household contemplating a solar installation? It can be boiled down to this harsh assessment: the chances that you will be living in the same house when the system is fully paid off are remote, so you’re better off leaving solar off the table.
Indeed, payback analysis reinforces the popular perception that solar energy is unaffordable, and that homeowners should wait for technological improvements or cost reductions before pursuing this energy option. But from the standpoint of energy security and climate protection, every day of inaction leaves us in a deeper hole. We no longer have the luxury of waiting for external triggers — be they painful market signals or nasty resource wars — to spur us into doing the right thing.
But there’s no reason to let payback length rule one’s ability to invest in sustainable energy for the home or business, especially if there are other approaches to valuing important economic decisions. One way to sidestep the gloomy verdicts of payback analysis is to do what most companies do when contemplating a long-term investment like solar energy — calculate the internal rate of return (IRR) on the invested capital. The definition of IRR is the annualized effective compounded return rate which can be earned on the invested capital, i.e. the yield on the investment.
By using this familiar capital budgeting method, I’m able to calculate an IRR of 6.1% for my solar water heater if natural gas prices rise a measly 3% per annum. That yield exceeds anything that a bank will offer you today. It will likely outperform the stock market this year, which is due for a substantial downward adjustment to reflect the slow-motion implosion of the housing market now underway. And, unless you live in a gold-rush community like Fort McMurray, Alberta, your house will do well just to hold onto its current valuation, let alone appreciate by six percent.
While all investments pose some degree of risk, the return on a solar energy system is about as safe and predictable as, well, the rising sun. Fortunately for the Earth and its varied inhabitants, the center of our solar system is situated well beyond the reach of humanity’s capacity to tamper with a good thing.
The collector system is simplicity itself; the panels just sit there gathering all that exogenous, renewable energy during daylight hours, unencumbered with moving parts that can wear out. The panels degrade slightly from one year to the next, but they shouldn’t lose more than 20% of their efficiency over a 30-year period. And, in the event of a violent weather event like a hailstorm, one’s homeowner insurance policy should cover the damage. All told, solar energy, whether used for electricity or heat, is about as close as it comes to a risk-free investment.
But what about solar’s contribution to the market value of the house it serves, which can be easily measured? A 10-year-old solar energy system should deliver 20 more years of electricity or heat, reducing that house’s energy overhead during that period. In the case of my installation, the 20 years of avoided energy purchases starting in Year 11 should exceed my entire out-of-pocket expense. One can infer from that calculation that houses that capture solar energy on-site will appreciate faster–or depreciate more slowly — than houses that don’t.
Granted, calculating the IRR of a solar installation doesn’t capture the full range of benefits that flow to the system owner. It doesn’t, for example, factor in the possibility that, before too long, natural gas will become a rationed energy source, but that’s a political outcome whose probability and impacts are, at this point, unquantifiable. True, environmental externalities can be modeled but it’s just an academic exercise until emission offset markets like the Chicago Climate Exchange become accessible to homeowners and small business owners as well as to utilities and multinational corporations. But calculating the installation’s IRR allows system owners to see something about solar energy that is not revealed in payback analysis, which is that obtaining electricity and/or heat from the sun is a sustainable and risk-free way of creating household wealth. And if the numbers support this conclusion, then why aren’t we reinvesting every last penny of profit from our fossil fuel-based economy into creating a renewable energy platform for the future?
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_rate_of_return
Petroleum and Natural Gas Watch is a RENEW Wisconsin initiative tracking the supply demand equation for these fossil fuels, and analyzing its effects on prices, consumption levels, and the development of energy conservation strategies and renewable energy alternatives. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit “The End of Cheap Oil” section in RENEW Wisconsin’s Web site. These commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blogand Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog.
by jboullion | Dec 29, 2006 | Uncategorized
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
Vol. 5, Number 9, December 28, 2006
A year ago my wife was firmly in charge the household laundry. Now, not only am I washing and drying all our clothes, including the sheets, towels, and pillow cases, I find myself looking forward to doing it. What is going on here?
A divorce? Wrong answer. Anyway, that would only explain the shift in personnel, not the attitudinal change. A personality transfer à la “Freaky Friday”? Incorrect. This is not a case of life imitating a Disney movie.
Place the blame instead on our rooftop solar water heating system, which was installed in January 2006. That purchase challenged me to think about integrating our solar ration”the daily allotment of sunlight that falls on our house and yard”more effectively into our regular routines. And few routines are as unavoidable as doing the laundry.
It so happens that we share a clothesline with two neighboring households. In years past, my wife would hang the clothes out to dry during the warm summer months, but in the colder months she would simply transfer the wet clothes to the gas-fired dryer stacked above the washing machine.
One may wonder: why deviate from that routine? Using the washing machine and dryer in our decidedly unfinished basement would allow her to go through a week’s worth of dirty laundry and finish the job in three hours.
But some time this spring, a question started plaguing me: if it’s a good thing to use sunlight instead of natural gas to wash clothes, why isn’t it equally true for drying them? And if my solar panel can preheat up my water tank on a sunny day in March, why not rely on the same energy source to dry the wet clothes after they’ve been washed?
With these questions tumbling round and round inside my brain, I decided to take action by commandeering the laundry and doing it myself. So what did I learn?
First and foremost, weather conditions should be the deciding factor in selecting when to do the wash. On cold days, clothes dry much faster in breezy, sunny days than in slack days under overcast skies. If you’re depending on the weather to deliver the energy it takes to dry your laundry, you’ll need scheduling flexibility and an opportunistic attitude. And I can’t emphasize enough the value of periodically checking the Internet weather sites, particularly the radar images, to avoid being unpleasantly surprised by sun showers or swiftly moving thunderstorms.
Everything you hang on the solar dryer, as I like to call it, will become dry over time. The same is true for garments hung inside your house or apartment. But there will be occasions, especially around the winter solstice, when there isn’t enough solar energy outside to finish the job by sundown. If your goal is to avoid using a fossil-fueled dryer, then you’ll need to deploy a drying rack or two to take advantage of the low-humidity warmth inside your dwelling. In the dead of winter, your furnace or wood stove can deliver whatever supplemental heat is needed to dry a full load of laundry in a 24-hour cycle.
Since I’ve taken over laundry duties, the combination of our solar ration and the available indoor heat handles about 80% of what the gas dryer used to do. The only action the gas dryer sees these days is towels and heavy garments.
And how is my obsession with the solar ration affecting our bottom line? While it’s too soon to estimate an annual savings, we did use about 20% less natural gas this November versus the year-earlier period, even though November 2005 was a much warmer month.
The rewards of a well-used solar dryer are by no means limited to the energy and dollar savings reported on the monthly utility bill. The best part of the package is the time spent outside. There you can take the pulse of the day from the sunlight, clouds, air temperature, wind and humidity that make up this continuous flux of energy that we call the weather. Relying on solar energy in this way makes a person more attuned to the ebb and flow of weather conditions. Yes, forsaking the fossil-fueled dryer for the great outdoors does take more time and effort, but it’s a small price to pay for eliminating the drudgery that comes with doing the laundry on autopilot.
Amazingly enough, community prohibition of clotheslines is not uncommon in the United States. Ironically, this inane belief that the sight of gym trunks and sweat socks hanging in a yard will drive property values lower is strongest in the Sun Belt, a region where solar drying”and water heating–should be the norm and not the exception. What can you say about a mindset that thinks nothing of wasting a precious fossil fuel on doing the laundry just to keep up appearances? Given how prevalent this silly and self-destructive behavior is in our land, is the imminent arrival of the oil peak and terminally declining natural gas stocks necessarily a bad thing?
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Petroleum and Natural Gas Watch is a RENEW Wisconsin initiative tracking the supply demand equation for these fossil fuels, and analyzing its effects on prices,
consumption levels, and the development of energy conservation strategies and renewable energy alternatives. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit “The End of Cheap Oil” section in RENEW Wisconsin’s web site: www.renewwisconsin.org. These commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blog: http://www.zmetro.com/community/us/wi/madison/renew
and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com
