Nissan Leaf...Reserved

June 16th, 2010... The day I reserved my Nissan Leaf.



About two years ago (and two years after we bought our Prius) I vowed that my next car would be fully electric. Back then I figured it would be a plug-in Prius, or something else from Toyota. After all, they lead the way in hybrid technology.

Gotta admit, before the Leaf, I never even considered buying a Nissan. Why the change? Well because the Leaf is the first fully electric car for the masses. Skeptics will argue about the longevity of the battery life. Or that 100 miles in a single charge is not far enough. After all the $100k Tesla Roadster goes 245 miles per charge.

We don't have that kind of dough in my family. In fact the Leaf, admittedly, is a bit of a stretch too. But I fully believe that to see the world change in the ways that my wife and I want to see it change, takes sacrifices. It's not cheap to go solar and it's a risky move to buy the first mass-produced electric car. But heck, we only live once and why not take a chance on something new. Revolutionary. I can't wait for the day that I am plugging my car into an outlet whose electricity is produced by the solar panels in the back yard.

Toyota affected serious change with the Prius and I applaud them for seeing a niche and going after it with gusto. Next time you are driving around, count how many hybrid vehicles you can find. Every major automaker has at least one model.

Will more electric cars come out with longer ranges than the Leaf? I sure hope so!! With China set to have 200 million cars on the road in the next decade, I can only hope that before long, I can't drive anywhere without seeing hoards of clean, quiet electric vehicles.

Battery-powered lawnmower

I mowed my lawn today.

Historically, this has not been something worth writing about. But today was different. Today was the first time in my life that I cut the grass and could hear myself think. The first time I could smell the fresh-cut grass as it was being shortened without breathing noxious fumes. The first time I didn't spill gas all over the place while filling my carbon dioxide spewing machine.

Enter my new Neuton CE 6 battery-powered lawnmower. It's quiet, maneuverable, and fun-looking. Is it a super powerful manly man beast of a machine? Of course not. I could care less about all that. Then again I am the kind of man that is not impressed by a Hemi, Hummer, or hog.

However, as I mowed under the solar panels that had charged the batteries running this new clean cutting machine, I did have a growing sense of getting somewhere. Lawnmowers are far worse than cars when it comes to polluting, and I am happy to have eliminated that portion of pollution that had been coming out of my yard.

I am so looking forward to the next generation of automobiles that are 100% electric and are charged at peoples' homes, where photovoltaic cells and small wind turbines are commonplace and no longer the exception. It seems that with the right people making the right decisions, that future doesn't have to be too far away.

Pedaling feet become a renewable energy source

This is so great, and the company that installed the technology has plans for widespread distribution at a rapid pace. Living in a time like this can be depressing sometimes, especially with the current financial mess in this country, but we also live in a time of unbelievable exploration and innovation.

From WSHU:
With energy costs shooting up in the region and across the country, there's been increased interest in renewable sources of energy, like solar and wind power. WSHU's Craig LeMoult has the story of another potential energy source - fitness buffs.

Listen to the story at WSHU.org.

'09 Electricity spike

Suddenly, the investment in solar panels is looking a little less pricey...

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/08/news/economy/electricity_prices/index.htm?postversion=2008070817

Solar Panels, Day 1

The solar panels were officially commissioned at 8:15 a.m. on Monday, April 7, 2008. It was a dark and overcast morning, and turning the system on produced minimal results at best. What a waste of money!!! Just kidding. The sun popped out around noon and for the rest of the day it was mostly sunny. End result? 18.5 kWh of energy produced on Day 1. Considering there was a morning of cloudiness and no results, that's not too shabby since we use an average of about 16 kWh per day. So far, so good!

Solar Panels

Get comfortable, this is going to be a long one.

About a year ago, Nicole and I were about to sign up for a Green Architecture class at Wesleyan University, in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program in which we are both enrolled. We had already done a lot of research into green building materials, some of which you have read about in past posts, some still to come. But a major investment was sort of in the works. We knew we wanted to do something big, and for our age, I think seriously considering a photovoltaic (PV) system a year after buying our first hybrid car was certainly big enough.

By the time the summer semester began, Nicole had already made some phone calls for information about different systems and we had a few sales reps come out to the house. The problem is, the peak of our roof runs North-South, meaning the slanted sides of the roof face due East and West, the exact opposite of what you want for a PV system. We have dreams of ripping off the back half of the roof and putting a full dormer across the back side of the house, and while trying to draw up plans for that, we went to great lengths to try to design the new roof in such a way as to make it somehow face South. It just wasn't happening. The best we could come up with was about a 2-degree pitch to the South, partially blocked by the peak of the roof during the latter half of the afternoon, and the ideal pitch for PV is 33-degrees, due South.

The last company we talked to (we didn't need to go any further) was Solar Wrights, who have an office in Stonington, CT, among others. Dave Cohen (email) was our sales rep and we now consider him a friend. Dave took a look at our roof and really listened to our ideas. He was unlike other people we had talked to, in that he really worked WITH us to design a system that we would be happy with.

Dave has a ground-mounted PV system at his house and noticed our large, mostly unshaded backyard. We hadn't considered a ground- or pole-mounted system but as soon as he suggested it we were on board. Our whole yard is a work in progress, much like the house, and Nicole and I both find solar panels to be gorgeous additions to a property, and not something to be hidden up on the roof necessarily. Everyone that has seen them so far agrees.

Anyway, We signed a contract in July, 2007 for a 4.2 kilowatt pole-mounted, tilt-able PV system that will produce, on average, all the electricity our house will use. We are still on the grid, and there is no electricity storage system, like a bank of high capacity batteries. We don't have the space (or money) for something like that, and in all honesty we don't often lose power, so going "off the grid" is not really a concern of ours. There will be months that our electricity bill will be a couple of dollars and others that we will have a credit balance. The credits can carry over month after month, in case we continually produce more than we use.

After beginning the process with Solar Wrights, we had other projects in the works like overhauling our heat and hot water systems. The new tankless hot water heater we got was strategically electric, so that it will basically run for free.

At the same time, however, we had to figure out how the hell to pay for the PV system. Without going into too many numbers, it is very a pretty expensive forray. Almost prohibitively expensive, in fact. Nicole and I do not have a lot of money, far from it. She works part time jobs and I work for a university, both of us coming from middle class families and both have parents that have worked their asses off to give their children better opportunities than they had growing up. We have both learned the importance of saving money and living fiscally responsible. All that said, this is not a financial commitment to be taken lightly. Luckily, the Connecticut Housing and Investment Fund offers an Energy Conservation Loan, which we applied for. It is a 10-year loan and is based solely on debt-to-income ratio, and does not take into consideration any jointly held assets. It does put a lien against the property, however, and would need to be paid off prior to selling the house, if we were ever to sell. The maximum loan amount is $25,000, which may or may not cover the cost of a PV system, depending on the size of it. Think of it like a home equity loan. I think the interest is tax deductible as well, we'll find out next year.

There is also a federal tax credit for PV systems installed before the end of 2008 as described here:

Tax credits are available for qualified solar water heating and photovoltaic systems. The credits are available for systems "placed in service" from January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2008. The tax credit is for 30% of the cost of the system, up to $2,000. This credit is not limited to the $500 home improvement cap.

Of course, like almost every tax credit, the maximum credit is nowhere near being 30% of the cost of the system. But hey, it's still a size-able credit nonetheless.

The only way we ever could have afforded this system, aside from the CHIF loan, was because of the rebate program offered by the CT Clean Energy Fund. They offer rebates for up to 40% of the installed system, based on the efficiency of the panels. The efficiency is determined by the number of modules, size and orientation of the solar array, shading, etc.

After being approved for the loan, Solar Wrights has really taken care of the rest, including the rebates. Tonya Morgan has been extremely helpful with all the paperwork, and her husband Charlie did an amazing job project managing the installation. This has been strange for Nicole and I, since almost every project we have done on the house we have done ourselves or with the help of our parents, siblings, and friends. Anyway, when we signed the contract with Solar Wrights, we were aware of the full cost of the system, but really never had to be concerned with the full cost. Your solar installer will take care of the rebates, and they deal directly with the CCEF before even determining the amount you are responsible for. By that I mean, we are not paying the full amount and then getting a chunk back in rebates, we just pay the post-rebate amount, and in our case there was a deposit and then 3 installment payments during the course of the process.

Installation: The system consists of two poles, set in a LOT of concrete. The concrete bases required 5' square holes to be dug 9' deep. The plywood forms were put in the holes and leveled, with the poles leveled within the forms. We also needed to dig an 18"-deep trench from the array to the house, for the conduit that would carry the wiring into the basement. This process made a much bigger mess of the yard than I had envisioned, but our yard was already kind of a mess anyway, so who cares. It's worth it.

Equipment: On each of the two poles are ten 210-watt SunPower solar panels, for a total of 20 panels. Each set of ten is independently tilt-able, so that in the winter we can tilt them more upright to catch more of the sun's rays, which is lower in the sky. We'll tilt them more horizontal in the summer months. And then in the basement is a SunPower 4000 inverter, which will convert the DC electricity produced by the panels into AC power that can go into the grid. There is also a meter in the basement so we can see how many kWh we are producing on a daily basis, as well as a shutoff switch next to the main panel, so we can turn off the power coming out of the inverter in case we need to work on the electric panel. There is another shutoff switch on the outside of the house so that if Connecticut Light and Power needs to work on the power lines, they can shut down the panels so that they won't backfeed into the system and electrocute the workers.

Long story short, this is a pretty complicated and expensive process, but if we can do it, anybody can. Before beginning this process, we really didn't know that much about PV systems, but it is such an exciting step to take that we are both happy to talk to everyone we know about it, share what we know, and hopefully make it less complicated for anyone else considering doing this.

On-Demand Water Heater

These are all the rage these days. I guess they have been around in Europe for a long time (we Americans are a little behind the times in many facets of Earth-friendly living it seems), and so we bought one. With the planned solar photovoltaic (PV) system, we went with an electric model made by American Tankless.

These are kind of hard to research I found, and most of the information you will find at this point will be on the manufacturer's websites, which of course all boast that their model is the best. I bought the American Tankless one because it came with a lifetime warranty. Who knows if this one is any better than the next one. Home Depot and Lowe's are pretty much useless sources of information, and last I checked only Lowe's carried a model in stock and it was a natural gas model.

Anyway, These come in oil, gas/propane, and electric models. The basic gist is that this is a little wall-hung unit that is never running or maintaining a vat of water at a certain temperature. You open a hot water faucet, it turns on. You close the faucet, it turns off. Very nice. With an electric model like mine, it consumes no electricity, ever, unless you turn on the hot water. That is pretty sweet. When it does turn on, it requires a 125 amp breaker (your house needs to be juiced up to run one of these things...like an electric oven or electric heat), but even without the solar panels installed yet, the water heater only raised our electric bill maybe $10-$15/month (and is 98.5% efficient). Admittedly, there are only two people showering in our household, but considering at $10/month, that's only $120 bucks a year to run the thing. I'm guessing a standard tank-style electric water heater uses a lot more electricity than that. On-demand models do cost more than a tank heater, but since water is never sitting in them, they should last longer.

The big selling point of on-demand hot water heaters are that they don't run except when you need them to. When you are off at work all day, there is no quantity of water having its temperature maintained. This saves electricity if you have an electric model, and obviously oil or gas if you have those models. The oil or gas models can typically vent right out a wall as well, and don't need to tie into the chimney. Electric ones could even be (and often are) installed under a sink or in a closet behind the shower... Doing this makes the heated water have less distance to travel to the place it is needed, and thus retaining more of its heat.

Ours is installed in the basement and is only pushing water up to the first floor right now. I'm guessing once we renovate the second floor, we may install a second on-demand heater upstairs.

I should note, this little thing is ONLY used for domestic hot water. Not for heating the house. I should also note that this type of water heater can be installed in-line with a solar thermal or geothermal system, so that those systems pre-heat the water before it gets to the electric water heater. If the pre-heated water is hot enough already, the water heater won't even turn on. If it needs to come up a couple degrees, the water heater will kick on as the water travels through it. I would imagine a solar thermal system will be added to our arrangement sometime in the future. Gotta get the solar PV system up and running first. More on that soon. It shouldn't be long now.

20% by 2010

Is your town participating? Shamefully, my town of Waterford is not, but I can say I have tried to do my part. After several emails to the First Selectman (Dan Steward), and after contacting Connecticut Innovations, I finally after months received the following email back from Steward:

Ryan,

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you on this idea. I have done some significant research into this program. I met with a representative of Ct Clean Energy and have their proposal for this project. The concept is excellent if we could utilize Green Energy in Waterford. The options provided in this program are for Photovoltaic, Methane Gas, Wind Power and Fuel Cell. The first three provide minimal return in our area based on location. The Fuel Cell option could provide us with approximately 5% of our usage based on where we can locate the unit initially with a major capital investment. The program provides an opportunity to buy energy certificates if we do not meet the 13% by 2010 which we would have to do. Those purchases based on today's rates would cost the town approximately $13,000 per year for no return other than to say we are trying to be green. At this time the Photovoltaic option has a very low potential of payback over the 20 year life based on the amount of electricity they produce. I also compared some of the other towns that have been doing this program for a while that are similar in size to Waterford and they are yet to hit 100 units.

I believe we are a little early in the process and we will continue to look to LEED options with our schools and possibly fuel cells for power and heat. Although they may be expensive today, the ROI is extremely important to our taxpayers as well as helping to maintain our environment.

Thanks again for your interest and we welcome your suggestions.

Dan Steward
860-444-5834

His comment about "The first three provide minimal return in our area based on location" absolutely baffle me. Our solar array that will be installed soon will provide 100% of the electricity our house needs. The sun is the friggin sun and as far as I know it's always up in the sky. Call me crazy. And our system will pay for itself within 7-8 years and will be producing electricity for at least 30 years (manufacturer's warranty). Hmmm something doesn't add up here.

See if your town is participating in this program. It doesn't hurt to ask and maybe you have someone more amenable to progress in control of your town.