The Solar House, Part Two and Three

In fact, because we now generate more solar energy than we can use, we welcome friends who own electric vehicles over to charge their car batteries for free.

Solar House Part 2 (Aug)
This month we reinstalled the 4-kW solar array over our main roof and put in place the 2-kW, triangle-shaped array of 14 panels over our garage. Our now 6-kW solar system includes a 4-kW inverter to convert the DC electricity coming from the solar panels into AC to power our appliances. Most homes wouldn't require a 6-kW system; we added the extra 2-kW solely to power up the 24 nickel metal hydride batteries in our Toyota RAV4 all-electric vehicle (seen in main image). In fact, because we now generate more solar energy than we can use, we welcome friends who own electric vehicles over to charge their car batteries for free. Cost: included in costs noted in "Solar, Part 1"

Battery Backup (Sep)
To be prepared in case of blackouts, we installed an 8-kW battery reserve system. This includes an inverter and charge controller that regulate energy flow to and from the batteries. If the utility grid goes down and we have a string of very overcast days, our batteries will give us about three days worth of conservative electric use. If the sun is shining, we have unlimited energy, of course. Cost: included in costs noted in "Solar, Part 1"

Solar, Part 3 (Oct)

This month we replaced our natural gas-fired water heater with an active, closed-loop solar hot water system (see the two gray solar panels visible on the left side of the roof) and a new 220-volt electric hot-water heater. Cost: $2,500

New Heating/Cooling (Jan)

The final step in making our house comfortable involved replacing the old, five-ton heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system with a split-ductless heat pump/HVAC system. This is a three-zone system, with small units in the den, dining room, and upstairs master bedroom. The system has an outside central operating unit and a compressor-heat exchanger that is about half the size of a typical air conditioner. Cost: $4,200

Costs & Benefits

After $18,500 in rebates and tax incentives, the total cost for all our energy-efficient improvements and our solar system, including labor, came to $43,000. We calculated that, if we had not made the retrofit, our energy bills for 2004, including fuel and oil for a gas-powered car, would have come to $6,000. With the upgrades, we have no energy costs (except for $5 a month for the one therm of natural gas we use, mostly for cooking). Thus, our entire energy makeover will pay for itself in just over seven years ($43,000/$6,000 = 7.2). And because our loan for these improvements is based on home equity, the interest payments are tax-deductible.

Since we remain connected to the utility grid, Southern California Edison's time-of-use billing program measures our overall electricity consumption and production. Rates vary depending on season and peak versus off-peak hours. With normal sunshine, we can actually see our meter "feeding the grid." Our electricity production earns us "use-it-or-lose-it" credit from the utility. In summer peak hours (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.), we can earn over 40 cents per kilowatt-hour; even during off-peak summer hours and in winter, we can earn credit. Each year, our credit amounts to between $200 and $300.

It's true that we live in warm, sunny California, which has some of the best rebates and tax incentives for going solar in the nation. But wherever you live, you can benefit from energy-efficiency and renewable-energy upgrades to your existing home and become part of the solution to global warming. See Resources for more general information. For more specifics on the Williamsons' retrofit, see this article published in Solar Today Magazine, from which our feature was drawn.


*Note: "Zero-energy" here refers to energy purchased, not energy used.

See also, The Solar House, Part One

Looking Forward, an Energy Scramble or a Blueprint?

This article is long and worthwhile reading. Follow the link for more detailed information.

clipped from dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com Like many institutions and individuals, Shell, the oil giant, is trying to divine what lies ahead in a world with limited energy options, a fast-growing energy appetite, and a climate system almost assuredly disrupted should carbon dioxide emissions from today’s fuels of choice continue their seemingly inexorable rise. Earlier this month, the company’s forecasters produced two energy scenarios for the next two generations, which they call “the world of scramble” and the “world of blueprints.” In 2002, I wrote about a report, “Great Transition,” ranging from Eco Communalism to Fortress World.” the real future will likely be a messy mix similar to the present There’ll be instability, poverty, overpopulation, and pollution in some places (they tend to go hand in hand, as in Haiti) that is the goal of Dot Earth (slide show), both this blog and a set of stories I plan to write in coming months. So coal makes a big comeback in some regions solutions that are politically straightforward

Wind Power Becoming More Affordable

clipped from wnyt.com Making electricity from wind is becoming a realistic option. A wind turbine system suitable for powering a family house or small farm is now priced at about 15-thousand dollars, according to conference participants. Almost all of the expense is upfront, so that after seven or eight years at current rates the cost is paid back and the owner is now enjoying basically free electricity. The wind doesn't always blow, so a wind turbine owner would need to stay on grid, have back up generators or other sources of power for complete reliability. But if it means reducing demand for current sources of juice, increasingly people are saying where do I sign up? Although it is non-polluting and renewable, there are real problems with wind power, including visual impact objections and risk to flying birds. For wind to be fully utilized those problems will have to be worked out.

$100 million investment to help solar energy plan

clipped from www.signonsandiego.com Under an agreement announced yesterday, Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems said it has landed a $100 million investment from NTR, an international holding company in Dublin, Ireland. for Stirling, which has come under fire from environmentalists who question Stirling's role in the 150-mile Sunrise Powerlink proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric Co. the Arizona startup with 40 employees plans to develop a power plant, consisting of 12,000 solar energy dishes, near El Centro at an estimated cost of $400 million. The plant would generate enough electricity for nearly 300,000 homes in San Diego Environmentalists say they are skeptical of the Stirling proposal. They doubt that the company can move from its prototype models to large-scale production in time to enable San Diego Gas & Electric to meet a statewide mandate that requires it to use renewable energy for 20 percent of its total power supply by 2010.

Waste not, want not

clipped from www.tbnweekly.com As Floridians demand a new vision for the future, Florida politicians are jumping on the “green” wagon. Taking baby steps forward, Florida legislators are testing fertile new ground. In February, the newest and largest solar power facility in sunny Florida was switched on at Rothenbach Park in Sarasota County he array, the second-largest in the Southeast, consists of 1,200 solar photovoltaic panels mounted at ground level, covering more than 28,000 square feet or about half the size of a football field The solar panels convert sunlight into electricity, producing 250 kilowatts of clean energy, enough energy to power 55 average homes Operating them prevents the release of more than 654,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year FPL’s Sunshine Energy Solar Array

Stern Reality: Is Global Warming Even Worse than You Thought?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Nicholas Stern, author of the gloomy, eponymous review that sparked a debate among environmental economists in 2006, said he was wrong. Things are actually much worse. From the Independent: “We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change,” said Lord Stern in a speech in London yesterday. “All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago.” […]He also reiterated his previous estimates that governments and business must invest the equivalent of between 1 to 2 per cent of global GDP annually up to 2050 in new technologies and efficiency measures or face climate change of catastrophic proportions. The Stern Review “People who said this was scaremongering are profoundly wrong. If anything, I was too reticent. What we are playing for is the transformation of the planet,” he said. President Bush’s vague calls f Jeroen van der Veer has gone red in the face calling for Europe to increase funding of clean-coal technology

Moore’s Law: Why Enviros Are Wrong on Nuclear Power

Happy looking guy. Contemplating or a case of agita?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore’s cheerleading for nuclear power is hardly news these days Mr. Moore, who now works as a nuclear-power advocate with the Clean and Safe Energy coalition, drops a few interesting pearls in an interview this week with Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International. [W]e made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. I think that’s as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. [S]olar is completely ridiculous. The cost is so high—California’s $3.2 billion in solar subsidies is all just going into Silicon Valley companies and consultants. It’s ridiculous. Unfortunately now the environmental movement is the primary obstacle here. If it weren’t for their opposition to nuclear energy, there would be a lot fewer coal-fired power plants in the United States and other parts of the world today.

OT: Book buzz: Pausch's Last Lecture is a good one

The Last Lecture

clipped from www.usatoday.com Professor delivers 'Lecture': Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture makes its debut at No. 2 on USA TODAY's Best-selling Books list, but Pausch, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, says sales aren't the reason he wrote the book. "I personally only cared about the first three copies, which are for my kids," he says. The book, written with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Zaslow, builds on a "last lecture" Pausch gave in September at Carnegie Mellon. Many in the publishing world believe Lecture will be the next Tuesdays With Morrie, which became a publishing sensation. It, too, dealt with wisdom imparted by a dying professor. Hyperion has had nine printings; 2 million copies are in print. GALLERY: Pausch's life in photos

The new 'scuppies' wear a mantle of green

clipped from www.usatoday.com First came hippies, followed soon by yippies, then preppies, yuppies, buppies and guppies. Now meet the "scuppies": socially conscious upwardly mobile persons. You know these people because they're everywhere. They eat, drink and sleep organic. They think it's easy being green. They want to live well while doing good. "You can't throw a stick and not hit one in Starbucks or the Whole Foods parking lot," "My whole living room was done by Novica.com," the do-gooder artisan-promoting website. "I wondered, why can't we be socially conscious and upwardly mobile at the same time?" Failla says he invented this latest neologism 10 years ago Failla has published "The Scuppie Manifesto" on his website (scuppie.com) The goal is to make green the norm, not the expensive alternative. Every generation has its own -ppie acronym for describing groups of like-minded people. How come? Will the term "scuppie" last as long as, say, hippie?

Thoughts on Bush's latest speech on climate change

Worth reading. Follow the link.

clipped from gristmill.grist.org Posted by David Roberts at 11:48 AM on 16 Apr 2008 Same as it ever was The whole media world is in a frenzy, yet again, over a Bush speech on climate change. A new strategy! An effort to secure a legacy! Exciting new principles and goals! Even my own bosses are pressing me to come up with a thoughtful reaction. Sigh. I hate to be the party-pooper. But we've been here before. How many times does Lucy expect us to try to kick this football?

The Race Between Two Forms of Sunlight

clipped from dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com There is a race afoot between two energy sources that are, in essence, different forms of concentrated sunlight Coal, of course, is one, forged from the baked, compressed remains of ancient plant life. And newcomer, capturing the heat of the sun with arrays of mirrors and turning it into electricity. estimates that China’s explosively growing use of coal for electric power had vaulted it past the United States into world leadership in emissions of carbon dioxide. so-called solar thermal power plants are steadily improving, in part because of new techniques for storing solar energy as heat so that electricity can be generated when it is needed most concentrated solar power — can be found in a nice, and enthusiastic, overview of the technology the Army’s Schofield Barracks on Oahu, where more than 5,300 homes are being built with solar hot water systems and photovoltaic panels When the project is done, it will be the world’s largest solar community

Solar king and the Stalin of windpower

This article is long and detailed so follow the link for more information.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Hermann Scheer has been described both as the "solar king" and the "Stalin of windpower" "Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania, "And the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy". Scheer, chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy what has become known as "Scheer's law", German households and businesses that generate renewable energy can sell it back to the grid at more than triple the normal market price. "The key to it working is that consumers have guaranteed access to the grid at guaranteed prices," More than 300,000 individuals and small businesses have jumped at the opportunity in Germany, and the number is rising all the time. Scheer's family, whose house is powered by a windmill, is among them. Scheer's law has created whole new industries - wind power, which employs 80,000 people in Germany, and photovoltaic (solar) power, which employs 40,000 "You give people energy independence and you get social commitment

New Ways to Store Solar Energy for Nighttime and Cloudy Days

clipped from www.nytimes.com Solar power, the holy grail of renewable energy, has always faced the problem of how to store the energy captured from the sun’s rays so that demand for electricity can be met at night or whenever the sun is not shining. The difficulty is that electricity is hard to store. Batteries are not up to efficiently storing energy on a large scale. A different approach being tried by the solar power industry could eliminate the problem. Storing Solar Energy The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Solar thermal systems are built to gather heat from the sun, boil water into steam, spin a turbine and make power, as existing solar thermal power plants do — but not immediately. The heat would be stored for hours or even days, like water behind a dam. “You take the energy the sun is putting into the earth that day, store it and capture it, put it into the reservoir, and use it on demand,” SolarReserve, a company backed in part by United Technologies, the Hartford conglomerate.

Save Your Favorite TV Show

Off track but a little fun.

clipped from www.usatoday.com It's that time of the year again when flailing television shows need all the help they can get, which is where you come in. Take our survey and vote for the shows you just can't live without next season. VOTE:  Which shows do you want to see back next season? clipped from www.zoomerang.com Within the next few weeks the networks will determine which of this season's TV series will return next fall. Tell us — and the networks — what you hope happens to these shows. Please select "Keep," "Drop," or "Don't Care" from the tab under each show. We'll reveal the results later this month.

Rocky Politics: The Coal Question

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Which weighs more this election year—the economy, or the environment? This was supposed to be the year the environment and climate change reached a political tipping point For the Democrats, the issue is especially prickly. As the WSJ reports today (sub reqd.), coal has become part of the political battlefield as the primaries wind down: The race for the Democratic nomination hinges on a handful of states where coal is still king. That puts Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a bind: how to attack global warming without threatening an industry that provides half the U.S.’s electricity and more than 80,000 mining jobs. Sen. Barack Obama called the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” We’ve written before And both candidates have been taken to task for double-talk on coal, such as Sen. Clinton’s apparent support for mountain-top removal coal mining

This Solar House, Part One

In this two part feature, Norma and Alan Williamson explain in detail how they went about a zero-energy retrofit of their home, which saves money, energy, and the global climate.


Solar, Part 1 (Dec)
We moved into our 2,300-square-foot house around Thanksgiving 2003. Within a month, in order to make use of state rebates that would decrease after the first of the year, we purchased a 6-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system. Installation occurred in two phases. First, in December, we installed the 4-kW array of 35 sapphire-blue PV panels that you can see on the south-facing side of our main roof; eight months later we added the 2-kW set over the garage (see "Solar, Part 2" below). This 6-kW PV system supplies all our energy needs, from our home's heating and air conditioning to the "fuel" for our electric car. (To learn how PV panels work, see Inside a Solar Cell.) Cost: $36,000 (6-kW system; after rebates and tax incentives totaling $17,500, our out-of-pocket expenditures came to $18,500)

Insulation (Jan)
As part of our goal to make our home net-zero-energy—that is, generating more energy than is consumed—we set about improving our home's insulation. In January, we contracted a company to inject cellulose (recycled paper) insulation into the walls, bringing them up to an R15 level. (The R-value indicates the resistance of a material to the passage of heat and cold.) The following month, we replaced our leaky, single-glaze aluminum windows with dual-pane thermal windows. These are so-called "low-emissivity" windows, which keep winter heat in and summer heat out. We left our front picture window (behind car in main image and at left) intentionally non-low-emissivity, so the winter sun could warm our living room—a passive solar technique. Cost: $1,300 (insulation), $10,000 (dual-pane windows)

Roof (Mar–Jul)
To further increase thermal resistance, we decided to replace the roof and upgrade our attic insulation. In March, we removed the 4-kW solar array as well as the existing, substandard roof tiles. The following month, we brought the attic insulation up to an R30 level. Then, in June, we installed aluminized solar sheathing on the roof. This is a thermal reflective plywood that keeps external heat out and reflects interior heat back in. We also installed roof jacks (to hold up the solar array) and then a new composite shingle roof. Finally, in July, we put in a whole-house cooling fan and whole-house heat-recirculating system (as well as two skylights, one seen in the center of the roof). The fan cools the attic and ceilings when outside temperatures are high, while the heat fan shuttles warm air from the attic to the ground floor when outside temperatures are low. Cost: $300 (attic insulation), $23 per 4' x 8' board (solar sheathing), $4,000 (new roof), $600 (whole-house fan), $570 (whole-house heater), $1,450 (two skylights)

Smart Clips: Nuclear Ghosts: On Anniversary, Three Mile Island Still Haunts Industry

clipped from blogs.wsj.com As nuclear power races back into the energy agenda, it keeps getting waylaid by old ghosts. Today is the 29th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, when a partial core meltdown in one of the reactors led to five days of panic and 14 years of expensive clean-up. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which opposes the nuclear revival on safety grounds, invoked the accident this week: “Three Mile Island was almost 30 years ago so perhaps the industry and the NRC have forgotten about it,” said Dave Lochbaum, the director of UCS’s Nuclear Safety Project. It’s doubtful either the NRC or the industry have, but no one else has for sure. When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was in favor of using nuclear energy to help California meet its energy needs, he received a shower of editorial criticism. The L.A. Times, picking up on the Governor’s comments that Three Mile Island references are often just scare tactics, rebutted this week:

Mitsubishi touts 18.6% efficient solar cell

Mitsubishi Electric says it has built a multicrystalline silicon solar cell with a "record" conversion efficiency of 18.6%

Mitsubishi touts 18.6% efficient solar cell

Mitsubishi Electric says it has built a multicrystalline silicon solar cell with a "record" conversion efficiency of 18.6%, achieving the mark by adding a low-reflectivity surface texture, optimizing the p-n junction to increase electric current generation, and incorporating a new metallization process that reduces shade loss of front grid electrodes.

For highly efficient PV cells, a honeycomb-textured structure is typically seen as suitable to reduce surface reflectivity, but a challenge to incorporate into production. The company says it has developed a method to fabricate such a structure on the surface of a 150mm multicrystalline silicon substrate, combining laser patterning and wet etching.

Further, the company says it is using a shallower, lightly doped emitter (n-layer) to increase light gain and improve power generation efficiency. And it says using modified screens and front metal electrodes reduces shading loss of front grid electrodes by 25% vs. previous cells.

Mitsubishi Electric says it has 18 domestic and seven international patents pending for this work, which it will present at the 23rd European Photovoltaic Conference in September in Spain. Introduction into mass production of the company's photovoltaic modules is planned for fiscal 2011 (starting April 2010). The company also aims to combine the technology with its high-efficiency PV inverters to increase output of solar power generation systems.

Solar Glossary of Terms

clipped from www1.eere.energy.gov Are you interested in solar electricity, but not sure what "photovoltaic conversion efficiency" means? You're not alone. we prepared this glossary of terms. In it you will find definitions of many important terms having to do with electricity, power generation, concentrating solar power (CSP), solar heating, solar lighting, and solar electricity, also known as PV. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z Photovoltaic(s) (PV) — Pertaining to the direct conversion of light into electricity. Photovoltaic (PV) Cell — The smallest semiconductor element within a PV module to perform the immediate conversion of light into electrical energy (direct current voltage and current). Also called a solar cell. Photovoltaic (PV) System — A complete set of components for converting sunlight into electricity by the photovoltaic process, including the array and balance of system components.