The solar water heating leader of western Iowa

Solar heated water--on the go!

I met Mike Howard of Iron Eagle Technologies about a year ago when he expressed interest in the VELUX solar water heating system.  Mike lives in a small town in the western part of Iowa called Elk Horn and has an uncanny passion for renewable energy.  While not normally the first place I'd rush off to for a sales call, his efforts on the solar PV and electric vehicle fronts captured the attention of CNN and SEIA for their national reporting so I thought to check him out.  My job is to find the right sort of installation partners to help us grow our solar business and Iron Eagle appeared to be a great fit.

Elk Horn happens to have a thriving Danish cultural heritage attraction called the Danish Villages.  Combining his passion for renewable energy, Mike saw an immediate connection with working with VELUX for solar water heating since our parent company is based in Denmark.  Iron Eagle became a VELUX solar 5-star installation partner last summer and immediately began installing solar water heaters throughout the town.  We installed a 4 panel system on the Elk Horn public school for preheating the water going to the cafeteria.  Later we put a smaller 2 panel system on a home in town.  Mike has also installed 8 panels on the roof of his new Norseman Brewery building--a Danish beer brewed with the help of Danish solar panels!  VELUX couldn't have asked for a better solar installation partner.

Just last week, Mike finished a terrific mobile display of a fully functional solar water heating system.  On the roof of the shed, he mounted 2 VELUX solar collectors in a roof-integrated configuration.  On the side of the she, he had a sink and shower installed.  In addition to using this for general promotional efforts, Mike wanted to provide solar heated water for the bike racers of RAGBRAI coming up on July 25th.  He plans to have ice cream, root beer, and samples of his new Norseman Brewing Company beer for the riders in addition to his solar heated water.  He'll be pulling this display to events with his newly wrapped van that sports graphics of the solar PV and water heating products he installs.

Solar projects for Iron Eagle Technologies in Elk Horn, IA

Solar technologies work and are ready for mass market adoption.  The efforts of people like Mike Howard are just the sort of catalyst that we need to make this a reality.

Rebuild with Solar

Natural disasters are dominating the headlines these days; Mississippi flooding and mega tornadoes have destroyed entire cities across the southeast and in Missouri.  As communities start the clean up process and begin to rebuild, we ought to encourage them to implement better building concepts and materials.  Insurance companies may only pay replacement costs but community leaders could team with local lenders to finance solar systems under established PACE regulations.  Solar technologies are ready today and the only barrier for their adoption is upfront cost.  Considering solar at this stage of the redesign process is the time to make it work most cost effectively and allows for creative ways to mitigate the upfront cost.  We will all be better off for it.

The inevitability of solar

It probably wouldn't be too surprising to learn that I really like solar technology.  Passive solar design, solar air heating, solar cooling, daylighting a space, solar water heating, and PV are all fascinating to me.  I even count biofuels as "solar" too as we're using sunlight to grow plants specifically designed for liquid, transportable fuel.  The energy transition that we're in now feels to me how I think people in the 50's were thinking about space exploration.  Those were hopeful times where technology was magical to the common man and promised positive changes in the future.  Solar today is very much like that; almost everyone sees the promise of it even if they have reservations about its practicality.  My argument though is that solar is also, in all its forms, truly the only sound energy option for the next 25 years or more.  I don't claim that solar will be the only energy technology we'll use, but I see it as the heavy lifter in our energy mix and in that it will provide the bulk of the power we'll need to live the lives we want to live.

I don't say this as an idealist or insider looking to help solar win out over other technologies.  I say it because there are no other candidates on the horizon that will be as scalable and affordable as distributed solar is now and will continue to be for some time.  That is why I'm in the solar business.  I like a clean environment but that didn't motivated me to change careers.  I saw an opportunity to get into a growing solar industry on the ground floor; I see our society as a whole as getting in on the ground floor of solar right now too.  My job is to grow solar water heating in the residential space.  I work to find projects and partners across my region and each system sold is hard fought.  I know that we're not far from a time when solar technology will be on every building, however because we're already seeing the military move in this direction today.  By 2013, solar won't be a novelty anymore but a fundamental building component.

Europe is already there in many areas; what happens when the sleeping giant (US) awakes?

If solar is inevitable, then why even write this post?  Because the journey is just as important as the destination.  Growing a solar base of energy capacity has been sporadic up to this point because we haven't really acknowledged the fundamental instability of our existing energy portfolio.  We're really the only major country without a comprehensive energy policy which is even more damaging because we have the largest impact on world affairs.  Without a consensus behind solar technologies, we'll continue to be distracted by the loser technologies.  We'll fritter away our time & money on dead ends which will make the inevitable shift to solar that much more difficult.

The Losers
Nuclear won't win because we've had over 60 years to figure out a way to handle the waste, danger, and cost of a nuclear plant for electricity generation; we haven't yet and probably won't for at least another 30 years or more.  Coal is plentiful and will probably have a role for some time, but the world will no longer accept externalizing the environmental or societal costs of coal production for much longer.  Agree or disagree, but climate change is an issue that is not going to go away.  Natural gas is plentiful today and at cheap prices but as we continue to load shift transportation and electricity to this fuel, its run as a fossil fuel darling will end too.  If people like T. Boone Pickens can make their case, we'll be burning a lot more natural gas in the coming years; rising prices are sure to follow that move.

I want to be positive towards solar without resorting to throwing other energy sources under the bus (maybe I shouldn't have titled this section The Losers then ;-).  Selling against something is confrontational and tends to put people on the defensive if their world view is being challenged.  Enough can be found on the web bashing fossil fuels, but I wanted to point out up front that the discovery of oil in particular has been one of the most transformative developments in all of human history.  There may have never been a better time to be a human being than right now, and we owe this fact to oil.  It's inevitable that solar technologies will displace oil though and not because oil is dirty or inefficient or imported from hostile countries.  It won't even really be much of a choice to use less oil; it is because oil is becoming too expensive to burn anymore.

2008 numbers; the line is pointing up again today in 2011

Drill baby drill
We're already at a trading range between $90 and $115 per barrel with a global population at or near 7 billion people and the following 3 facts can only lead to even higher prices: 

1. We're going add another billion people in the next 15 years (more mouths to feed).
2. A greater percentage of the world will demand to live with a standard of living as we have in the US (more cars to drive).
3. We are consuming oil as we extract it today and no major reserves exist to make up for rising demand (nothing lasts forever).

Sure we have market players trying to manipulate oil prices.  Sure we limit where we drill new wells based on aesthetic and environmental factors.  The rarely discussed fact is that we haven't found any easily extractable oil reserves in any sort of quantity since the North Sea and now that's almost gone.  We need to be finding reserves on the scale of Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field every couple of years to keep up with the forecasted demand growth from rising global populations but we aren't.  We drill everyday (baby) but we have to acknowledge that the wells are literally running low.  The excellent but sobering documentary The End of Suburbia makes the case for what all this means much better than I can.  My contribution to the debate is to point out that the solar technology we have today can mitigate most if not all these troubles in a very, very short period of time.

Why solar wins
Once we see the scope of the challenge we face, the only conceivable step to take will be a large scale roll out of distributed solar technologies (PV, water heating, space heating, passive design, and daylighting).  It will be the most logical step because it is the step that individuals can actually participate in.  Plumbers can plumb solar water heaters with little or no training.  Carpenters can install skylights today.  Homeowners can connect more PV panels to their homes as their budget allows over time.  New buildings will capture and shed solar heat with no need for new technology--just a rearrangement of building and landscaping materials we use already.  We won't have to wait for anyone in charge or anything else to be invented for a dramatic roll out to occur.  It is really up to us individuals.

Roofing crew installing a solar water heating system

I can imagine that this post will have critics; I haven't really tried to make a convincing argument for many of the details I brought up.  I just wanted to lay out the way I see things though, and I get the feeling that many others are of a similar mind.  Change in life is inevitable and oftentimes difficult.  The sooner that you recognize the change, the better you can prepare, and the smoother the transition will be.  I'll continue to sell solar systems everyday because I enjoy the product, the challenge and the people in the industry.  I know that solar won't be novel for long though and that in many ways, I'm working my self out of a job.  I think that I'll be able to handle that change just fine when the time comes though. 

Reducing water heating costs in multifamily buildings

Solar water heating is a very simple concept; the sun's rays heat water, the heated water is stored in a tank, and then it's used whenever someone wants it.  In previous a post, I made the case that solar works effectively anywhere in the US.  Just because something is possible, it doesn't mean that it's practical however (Nissan Leaf?).  The purpose of this post is to highlight a particular application for solar water heating that can be very rewarding both environmentally and financially.

Here in Chicago, we find many 3-4 story residential buildings that get divided into as many as 12 units.  Some of these buildings are owned as condos with separate unit owners and some have a single owner managing the units as apartments.  In either case, domestic water heating in this style of building can either be done with a central boiler (very common) or with individual water heaters for each unit (less common).  Plumbing a solar water heater as a retrofit to a multifamily building with individual water heaters is probably a less ideal application so I'll highlight two ways to work with a central boiler.

The Chicago Graystone--a typical residential building in the city

Case 1: Condo
In a condominium, each unit is individually owned.  The unit owner pays a mortgage on their unit as well as an association assessment to handle shared expenses (snow removal, common area heating/cooling/lighting, landscaping, roof repair, etc).  In the case of a condo building with a central water heater, domestic water heating is a shared expense.  In this case, a modestly sized solar water heater could be plumbed in-line before the existing water heater to pre-heat all incoming cold water into that tank.  A 6-unit building could see 60-80% water heating cost reduction with just a 3-4 panel system.  The cost of this system would be shared by the unit owners.  The unit owners would then calculate their ownership percentage of the new solar system installation costs to claim the 30% federal tax credit as well as any state or local incentives that might apply.  As a rule of thumb, 1 solar collector for every 2 units should meet federal tax incentive requirements for system productivity.  While organizing a condo association around a capital improvement project like this may be akin to herding cats, implementation of a solar water heater could be very simple to do with a solid return on investment for the association.

Cat Herding--much like many condo meetings I've been to

Case 2: Apartment Building
Many landlords of buildings with central boilers for water heating provide their tenants with hot water as part of the monthly rent.  This scenario may be one of the most attractive applications for a solar water heating system.  Like in a condo building with a central boiler, a solar water heater would pre-heat water flowing into an existing water heater.  The benefits to the landlord are very attractive.  Not only will he or she reduce their monthly costs on water heating bills, but the solar system will bring them a 30% federal tax credit, accelerated depreciation benefit, any state/local incentives, and position the apartment as one that is more attractive to younger tenants than comparable other buildings without solar.  On top of all that, the building will actually have more hot water to draw on so the building manager will get fewer complaints for cold showers.

Solar may have kept him out of hot water with his tenants

 

For further reading, Wisconsin's Focus on Energy program has developed a fact sheet detailing many of the advantages of solar water heating in multifamily applications.  I recommend that you check it out.

Free Hot Water with Every New Home!

Image courtesy VELUX America

In a recent NY Times article covering issues surrounding the ongoing housing slump, an interesting sales tactic caught my eye.  One builder outside Chicago is offering a credit at a local GM dealership with the purchase of a new home and he's not the only one.  While this promotion appears to be working to generate some sales, I have an even better idea for home builders.

In a market where new homes are competing against plummeting existing home prices driven by foreclosures, builders must differentiate their product on things other than price.  New homes must offer features that you can't find in older ones if they have any hope of being attractive.  One thing that almost no existing house has is an integrated solar water heating system.  A new home builder looking to stand out and make an impact in the minds of buyers should offer "Free Hot Water with Every New Home!"  Unlike with a free car, a free solar water heating system would reduce the homeowners' monthly power bills, reduce their carbon footprint, appreciate in value as fuel costs rise and make a leadership statement that appeals to 94% of us.  On top of that, local renewable energy creates good, local green collar jobs.

Solar water heating works everywhere in the US with almost immediate payback on invested dollars when financed as part of a standard home mortgage.  In an economic downturn, the best way out is to commit money to long term infrastructure enhancements.  In the past, this has meant roads, dams, bridges, etc that provide value for many years after the upfront costs were recovered.  Now we can add renewable energy to that mix.   Let's commit to making this sound investment today so that we can reap the benefits for decades to come.

Where Chicago gets its power

ComEd sent out its annual Environmental Disclosure Statement last week detailing where the electricity that supplies Chicago has come from.  50% nuclear, 38% coal, 9% natural gas, and then all the others--not a very pretty picture. 

Leaving all the operational safety and environmental impact considerations for our major electricity sources aside, it's just not a great idea to have so much of generation capacity confined to such a small number of sources.  Maybe one of the best arguments for growing a distributed generation network of small solar systems is the redundancy it provides us all.  Even those of us in a neighborhood who don't have a solar system on our own roof benefit from the system on our neighbor's roof. 

So what's the trigger that will get us started on this better path?

Why SRECs work for Solar Water Heaters

For this post, I'll need to define a few terms and answer a few questions first.

What are RECs?

Renewable Energy Certificates (Credits) are tradable energy commodities that represent the clean component of generating 1 MWh of electricity from renewable sources.

 From: Scalo Solar Solutions

Why do RECs exisit? or "Fund it and it will come"

States across the country have passed Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) bills over the past few years. RPS's have come about because the people have demanded that a portion of their electricity should come from clean energy sources.  RPS percentages vary across the country.  In Illinois, we have a requirement to generate 25% of our electricity from renewable energy by the year 2025 (1).  Most of our electricity comes from coal and nuclear power and there has been a rising movement to shift some of this generation capacity to better energy sources.  Wind, Solar Electric, Landfill Gas, Biomass, Hydroelectric, and Biodiesel are all technologies that qualify for RPS goals.

RECs are the "currency" that states use to meet their RPS.  If a 1 MW PV farm gets installed in Chicago, then the owner of that PV farm can sell about 1,200 RECs to Illinois to help it meet its RPS goal for the year.

Illinois consumes about 136,000 MWh of electricity per year (2) so would need about 6,800 MWh of renewable energy to meet RPS goals for 2011 (5%).  Since Illinois current generates only 735 MW of renewable energy, Illinois is forced to buy RECs from sources outside the state.  If you view RECs as a stimulator for renewable energy which also stimulates jobs, cleaner water & air, university research, and energy independence, then Illinois is exporting millions of dollars to fund other states clean energy goals.  If you fund renewable energy (with RECs), clean energy will be installed.

 

What are SRECs?

In the Chicago PV farm example above, Solar RECs (SRECs) are RECs that come from solar energy systems.  Certain states have created special solar carve outs in their RPS bills to mandate a small percentage of their RPS to be met by solar technology specifically.

From: SRECTrade.com

Why Solar Water Heaters should qualify as SRECs generators?

Solar water heaters (SWH) are different from solar electric systems (PV) in that SWH converts sunlight to heat while PV converts light to electricity.  SWH systems reduce the energy required to heat up water for cleaning, bathing, and cooking in our homes just as PV reduces the energy required to power our lights, TVs, appliances, computers, etc.  PV qualifies for meeting RPS goals because PV energy has been easy to measure and track where SWH has been more difficult to quantify.  This is no longer the case however due to the Solar Rating and Certification Corporation (SRCC).  This group now measures the energy output of a complete SWH system in a particular area and publishes this data on its website.  In Chicago, a 2-panel solar water heater can produce 2,680 kWh worth of energy in a year which would equate to 2.7 RECs.

My contention is that since this SWH production data is independently verified, it should serve as a basis to qualify SWH systems as SREC generators.  SWH systems are a robust, cost effective way for a property owner to reduce their energy consumption with clean energy.  SWH adoption is scalable in that systems can be installed very quickly and work at almost any property.  Lots of local jobs would The state would also benefit by keeping its clean energy investment dollars local and continue to pay dividends for the years ahead.  Some areas have already begun to allow SWH systems to generate SRECs towards their RPS (NC and DC); I hope that more follow suit in the coming years.

_____________________________________

(1) RPS data from DSIRE
(2) Illinois energy facts from StateMaster.com