ALTERNATIVE ENERGY — Part II
September 2003
Articles
This is the second in a 4-part series on the latest in alternative energy technologies.
By Paul Henderson
The lights went out in a big way on August 14, further emphasizing the urgent need to investigate and invest in alternative ways of heating, cooling and lighting our world. As 50 million people were suddenly left in the dark — or worse the elevator or the subway — on that day you could almost hear the experts and innovators in off-the-grid energy systems saying aloud: “I told you so.”
No matter how alternative your system is, if you were hooked up to the grid that day the power went out. But some who get their electricity from solar panels, for example, were probably unaware that the biggest city in Canada and most of the U.S. eastern seaboard were in the dark until they watched the news.
The sun is the oldest and most obvious source of energy on earth. Before nuclear, before hydro-electricity, before oil, natural gas, coal, wind and even before wood, was the sun. What could be more obvious than harnessing the heat of a perpetually burning ball of fire? And what could be more obvious than planning the construction of our homes to best maximize the heating power of the orb that sustains life?
There is an urgent and pressing need to stop fighting natural processes and refocus attention — money and public policy — not towards using natural processes but working with them.
Addicted to fossil fuels and electricity that comes out of holes in the wall we have turned our backs on the sun. But increasingly people are returning to solar. Solar power has for years partially languished as an interesting hobby for those with substantial disposable incomes or for its novelty factor for engineering students in solar-powered cars.
Now government and big business are realizing the benefits of renewable energy sources like solar. The results are only positive: Money, natural resources, the environment are all saved, and a holistic approach to energy use will enrich us all.
Much confusion has followed the federal government’s ways of meeting Kyoto commitments but part of the announced funding includes money for the provinces to explore alternative and renewable energy sources. Other good news comes from the final report of the Ontario government’s Select Committee on Alternative Fuel Sources, which is full of recommendations to put the province on the road to better utilizing the sun, the wind, not to mention kicking that nasty coal habit. Whether or not the current Ontario government will adopt most or all of the committee’s recommendations will remain to be seen but doing so will be an important step in the right direction. One element of the government’s recently announced Energy Action Plan is the Green Power Standard requiring that 8% or 3,000 megawatts of Ontario’s electricity come from renewables by 2013. Commissioner of Alternative Energy Steve Gilchrist has made a lot of references to “Ontario being a leader” in the field of renewable energy. But considering our current reliance on coal, oil, and nuclear compared to nations like Germany, Denmark, Japan and even the U.S., Ontario is at best a follower.
But follow we should.
PASSIVE SOLAR
When building a house the incorporation of the sun into the design is a great way to save energy. Think about the sun and about your movements throughout your house. If you aren’t building a house now try an experiment: Think about the house or apartment where you live now with the sun in mind. If you are an early riser, is your bedroom window facing southeast? If you are a late riser is it on the opposite side of the house? If the answer to either of those is “no” then — at least in part — your house is not designed well for you. If you like to sleep late and you have any window facing early morning sun then you are battling nature. In the dead of winter as the first morning sunshine is beating down on your window you are keeping its rays at bay with thick curtains or blinds thus losing the heating benefits of those rays.
Chris Magwood of Camel’s Back Construction builds straw bale houses that cooperate with nature by using the sun rather than fighting it. He says that if you are building a house you should think about the way you move through your house during the day. Where are you going to be and where is the sun going to be? Windows are somewhat over-utilized and Magwood suggests not overdoing it with glass.
“Every window without direct sun is a net loser,” he says. “Some regularly placed windows are all you need.”
Because of the design of his own house, which incorporates good passive solar design, mass heating (see below), and his own conservation of electricity he uses very little power and his house is comfortable in winter and in summer.
“We didn’t heat our house during the day this (last) winter in minus 20 and minus 30 temperatures,” he says. “The gain is great in winter but avoiding the heat in summer is also very important.”
If you are very careful in your design, a window with an awning that receives direct sun all day in winter will not in summer because the sun is higher in the sky. Simple trick. A grapevine trellis is another good option. Some other common sense ideas include species of trees on the property. Deciduous trees on the south side of the house will be lush and leafy in the summer helping to block that hot sun and bare in winter letting the rays warm things up.
“People think my house is air-conditioned,” Magwood says. “But all it is, is no summer sun.”
Again, passive solar is anything but a new concept. Many who read this article will remember growing up in farm houses with a summer kitchen and a winter kitchen. Because of logical necessity many rooms would be closed off in winter and the living and cooking quarters would shrink to a smaller area. In summer in some old farmhouses the cooking would take place in a screened in area to let out the huge amount of heat from the wood stoves and allow for cross breezes.
Most of the principles of passive solar are common sense features of a way of thinking that has been forgotten.
Passive and active solar water heating is a growing trend. Bob Swartmann and Solcan Ltd. in London, Ontario installs solar hot water systems for all kinds of buildings including apartments, nursing homes, car washes and homes. A solar hot water heating system is a relatively simple system whereby water is pumped through tiny tubes that run through black solar collectors on the roof of a building and then into a hot water storage tank in the building.
Another commercial example of solar heating is the Solarwall™, an application suitable for large factories or warehouses that have large south-facing walls. The wall is made of black aluminum or steel with small holes that draw in air that is heated in the space between the building and the wall. Ventilation fans at the top of the wall draw the air up and into the building’s duct system. In summer the fans are turned off and the wall helps to keep things cooler inside because the south-facing wall doesn’t receive direct sunlight as it is protected by the wall. The Bombardier Canadair plant in Montreal has the world’s largest solar air heating system covering 10,000 m2.
The City of Toronto’s central maintenance garage on Eastern Avenue has just this year installed a $277,000 Solarwall™ paid for by Natural Resources Canada and the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. The projected annual savings are forecasted to be 85,000 m3 of natural gas, 160 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and about $30,000.
MASS HEATING
Traditional furnaces are very inefficient ways of heating because of the way they blow hot air around. What happens is the ceiling gets heated until the air at thermostat level is room temperature. So while it might be 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) at chest level, not only is it 85 degrees up on the ceiling where no one lives but it is cold on the floor. If you heat the high mass areas of a house: the floor, the walls, then the air gets heated as opposed to vice versa. If you open a door in a traditionally heated home the hot air rushes outside. The same thing happens where the floor is heated but you don’t really lose anything as the floor remains warm. It works well even in a badly insulated home but in a well-insulated home coupled with a good design, the energy savings can be substantial.
“Passive solar plus mass heating makes a huge difference,” says Magwood.
According to Blaize Monostory, an energy efficiency advisor, who designs and installs hot water heating systems the cost for a comparable house heated with hot water will be 30% less than hot air. Mass heating systems are also quieter, there is an elimination of hot and cold areas, they don’t blow air (and the dust with it) around and if you’ve ever walked on a heated floor in winter you will know just how cozy they can be. And of course solar powered hot water heating can make a real environmental difference too, according to Alex Waters who is the project manager for the Centre for Sustainable Living at the Kortright Centre: “If everyone put a solar hot water heating system in, we would have no problem meeting Kyoto.”
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS
Usually when people think about solar power they aren’t talking about having a deep, dark tiled window ledge or planting a maple tree in front of their bedroom window. Most people are thinking of photovoltaic (PV) cells. Using PV cells to generate electricity has been done for decades but for a number of reasons — not the least of which is cost — they haven’t caught on. However, there are more and more instances of PV cells being used where traditional electricity is hard or inefficient to access. Anyone building in a remote area beyond the last hydro pole will want to consider PV for electricity because the energy company will charge about $1,000 per kilometre plus $250 per year and a higher rate then anyone else to get connected. So PV is becoming more prominent for remote dwellings.
But even in the city they are popping up. Look on top of the parking meter stations on Toronto streets and you will notice a little solar panel providing the small amount of electricity needed to run the machines. Also those portable digital Ministry of Transportation construction signs out on highways all over the province are now mostly solar-powered.
Photovoltaic cells are used for generating electricity but not for heating. As Waters of the Kortright Centre puts it, using PV cells for heating is “like using a chainsaw to cut butter”.
The problem with PV cells is that right now for most homeowners they don’t make sense economically. Waters says that the price of panels installed amortized over 20 years will be about 35 to 50 cents a killowatt-hour. Considerably higher than the artificially low 4.3 cents Ontarians are paying.
Canada and Ontario are moving forward with alternative energy initiatives but to give you a picture of how we are following — rather than leading — in 1999 Canada had 1,356 killowatts of installed PV power. Compare that to 100 megawatts (100,000 killowatts) in Germany and a whopping 2,000 megawatts in Japan. Currently Denmark leads the world in alternative energy getting a solid 15% of the country’s power requirements from renewable sources.
Despite the current costs Rob McMonagle, director of Canadian Solar Industries (CANSIA), is optimistic that costs will come down in the future: “There will be a time when the cost is competitive,” he says. “We aren’t there yet but we will be.”
WHAT’S COMING
The Ontario government’s Energy Action Plan includes, among other things, a rebate program for the installation of solar panels on 100,000 homes in the province. If the political will wasn’t powerful enough to get the Energy Action Plan in motion before the great blackout of 2003 it certainly is now.
There are other positive government programs as well. In June the federal government announced the National Home Retrofit Rebate Program based along the lines of the ongoing Toronto Greensaver Home Rewards Program. Both give those who retrofit their homes a rebate based on how much energy will be saved with the retrofits. The federal program boasts an average rebate of $1,000 and the Greensaver program has been providing an average of $850. The Greensaver program is in its final year and will be over by June 2004 or when the money runs out.
Businesses too are eligible for some large rebates to become more energy efficient. National Resources Canada will pay companies 25% up to $80,000 in rebates if they install active solar hot water or air heating systems.
There isn’t really any question which direction the world is going in terms of energy use — especially in light of the recent power outages in Canada and the U.S. And with international political instability and dwindling oil reserves even some of the more ardent oil barons are looking at alternative energy as the way of the future. BP and Shell are leading the way in terms of the big oil companies investing in wind and solar power.
According to the Bruntland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development from 1987, renewables will play a key role in the century we’ve just recently entered. To that end they declared: “The Commission believes that every effort should be made to develop the potential for renewable energy, which should form the foundation of the global energy structure for the 21st century.”
Next month look for a focus on another of those increasingly ubiquitous energy sources in the third installment in this alternative energy series: Wind.
• For info on Greensaver call (416) 203-3106 or visit www.greensaver.org
• For info on NRC initiatives visit www.nrcan.gc.ca/redi
• To download Ontario’s Energy Action Plan visit www.energy.gov.on.ca
• Other interesting and useful sites:
Home Power Magazine • www.homepower.com
SolarwallTM • www.solarwall.com
Camel’s Back Construction • www.strawhomes.ca
Kortright Centre • www.kortright.org
Solcan Ltd. • www.solcan.com
Canadian Solar Industries • www.cansia.ca
Toronto Atmospheric Fund • www.city.toronto.on.ca/taf
By Paul Henderson
The lights went out in a big way on August 14, further emphasizing the urgent need to investigate and invest in alternative ways of heating, cooling and lighting our world. As 50 million people were suddenly left in the dark — or worse the elevator or the subway — on that day you could almost hear the experts and innovators in off-the-grid energy systems saying aloud: “I told you so.”
No matter how alternative your system is, if you were hooked up to the grid that day the power went out. But some who get their electricity from solar panels, for example, were probably unaware that the biggest city in Canada and most of the U.S. eastern seaboard were in the dark until they watched the news.
The sun is the oldest and most obvious source of energy on earth. Before nuclear, before hydro-electricity, before oil, natural gas, coal, wind and even before wood, was the sun. What could be more obvious than harnessing the heat of a perpetually burning ball of fire? And what could be more obvious than planning the construction of our homes to best maximize the heating power of the orb that sustains life?
There is an urgent and pressing need to stop fighting natural processes and refocus attention — money and public policy — not towards using natural processes but working with them.
Addicted to fossil fuels and electricity that comes out of holes in the wall we have turned our backs on the sun. But increasingly people are returning to solar. Solar power has for years partially languished as an interesting hobby for those with substantial disposable incomes or for its novelty factor for engineering students in solar-powered cars.
Now government and big business are realizing the benefits of renewable energy sources like solar. The results are only positive: Money, natural resources, the environment are all saved, and a holistic approach to energy use will enrich us all.
Much confusion has followed the federal government’s ways of meeting Kyoto commitments but part of the announced funding includes money for the provinces to explore alternative and renewable energy sources. Other good news comes from the final report of the Ontario government’s Select Committee on Alternative Fuel Sources, which is full of recommendations to put the province on the road to better utilizing the sun, the wind, not to mention kicking that nasty coal habit. Whether or not the current Ontario government will adopt most or all of the committee’s recommendations will remain to be seen but doing so will be an important step in the right direction. One element of the government’s recently announced Energy Action Plan is the Green Power Standard requiring that 8% or 3,000 megawatts of Ontario’s electricity come from renewables by 2013. Commissioner of Alternative Energy Steve Gilchrist has made a lot of references to “Ontario being a leader” in the field of renewable energy. But considering our current reliance on coal, oil, and nuclear compared to nations like Germany, Denmark, Japan and even the U.S., Ontario is at best a follower.
But follow we should.
PASSIVE SOLAR
When building a house the incorporation of the sun into the design is a great way to save energy. Think about the sun and about your movements throughout your house. If you aren’t building a house now try an experiment: Think about the house or apartment where you live now with the sun in mind. If you are an early riser, is your bedroom window facing southeast? If you are a late riser is it on the opposite side of the house? If the answer to either of those is “no” then — at least in part — your house is not designed well for you. If you like to sleep late and you have any window facing early morning sun then you are battling nature. In the dead of winter as the first morning sunshine is beating down on your window you are keeping its rays at bay with thick curtains or blinds thus losing the heating benefits of those rays.
Chris Magwood of Camel’s Back Construction builds straw bale houses that cooperate with nature by using the sun rather than fighting it. He says that if you are building a house you should think about the way you move through your house during the day. Where are you going to be and where is the sun going to be? Windows are somewhat over-utilized and Magwood suggests not overdoing it with glass.
“Every window without direct sun is a net loser,” he says. “Some regularly placed windows are all you need.”
Because of the design of his own house, which incorporates good passive solar design, mass heating (see below), and his own conservation of electricity he uses very little power and his house is comfortable in winter and in summer.
“We didn’t heat our house during the day this (last) winter in minus 20 and minus 30 temperatures,” he says. “The gain is great in winter but avoiding the heat in summer is also very important.”
If you are very careful in your design, a window with an awning that receives direct sun all day in winter will not in summer because the sun is higher in the sky. Simple trick. A grapevine trellis is another good option. Some other common sense ideas include species of trees on the property. Deciduous trees on the south side of the house will be lush and leafy in the summer helping to block that hot sun and bare in winter letting the rays warm things up.
“People think my house is air-conditioned,” Magwood says. “But all it is, is no summer sun.”
Again, passive solar is anything but a new concept. Many who read this article will remember growing up in farm houses with a summer kitchen and a winter kitchen. Because of logical necessity many rooms would be closed off in winter and the living and cooking quarters would shrink to a smaller area. In summer in some old farmhouses the cooking would take place in a screened in area to let out the huge amount of heat from the wood stoves and allow for cross breezes.
Most of the principles of passive solar are common sense features of a way of thinking that has been forgotten.
Passive and active solar water heating is a growing trend. Bob Swartmann and Solcan Ltd. in London, Ontario installs solar hot water systems for all kinds of buildings including apartments, nursing homes, car washes and homes. A solar hot water heating system is a relatively simple system whereby water is pumped through tiny tubes that run through black solar collectors on the roof of a building and then into a hot water storage tank in the building.
Another commercial example of solar heating is the Solarwall™, an application suitable for large factories or warehouses that have large south-facing walls. The wall is made of black aluminum or steel with small holes that draw in air that is heated in the space between the building and the wall. Ventilation fans at the top of the wall draw the air up and into the building’s duct system. In summer the fans are turned off and the wall helps to keep things cooler inside because the south-facing wall doesn’t receive direct sunlight as it is protected by the wall. The Bombardier Canadair plant in Montreal has the world’s largest solar air heating system covering 10,000 m2.
The City of Toronto’s central maintenance garage on Eastern Avenue has just this year installed a $277,000 Solarwall™ paid for by Natural Resources Canada and the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. The projected annual savings are forecasted to be 85,000 m3 of natural gas, 160 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and about $30,000.
MASS HEATING
Traditional furnaces are very inefficient ways of heating because of the way they blow hot air around. What happens is the ceiling gets heated until the air at thermostat level is room temperature. So while it might be 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) at chest level, not only is it 85 degrees up on the ceiling where no one lives but it is cold on the floor. If you heat the high mass areas of a house: the floor, the walls, then the air gets heated as opposed to vice versa. If you open a door in a traditionally heated home the hot air rushes outside. The same thing happens where the floor is heated but you don’t really lose anything as the floor remains warm. It works well even in a badly insulated home but in a well-insulated home coupled with a good design, the energy savings can be substantial.
“Passive solar plus mass heating makes a huge difference,” says Magwood.
According to Blaize Monostory, an energy efficiency advisor, who designs and installs hot water heating systems the cost for a comparable house heated with hot water will be 30% less than hot air. Mass heating systems are also quieter, there is an elimination of hot and cold areas, they don’t blow air (and the dust with it) around and if you’ve ever walked on a heated floor in winter you will know just how cozy they can be. And of course solar powered hot water heating can make a real environmental difference too, according to Alex Waters who is the project manager for the Centre for Sustainable Living at the Kortright Centre: “If everyone put a solar hot water heating system in, we would have no problem meeting Kyoto.”
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS
Usually when people think about solar power they aren’t talking about having a deep, dark tiled window ledge or planting a maple tree in front of their bedroom window. Most people are thinking of photovoltaic (PV) cells. Using PV cells to generate electricity has been done for decades but for a number of reasons — not the least of which is cost — they haven’t caught on. However, there are more and more instances of PV cells being used where traditional electricity is hard or inefficient to access. Anyone building in a remote area beyond the last hydro pole will want to consider PV for electricity because the energy company will charge about $1,000 per kilometre plus $250 per year and a higher rate then anyone else to get connected. So PV is becoming more prominent for remote dwellings.
But even in the city they are popping up. Look on top of the parking meter stations on Toronto streets and you will notice a little solar panel providing the small amount of electricity needed to run the machines. Also those portable digital Ministry of Transportation construction signs out on highways all over the province are now mostly solar-powered.
Photovoltaic cells are used for generating electricity but not for heating. As Waters of the Kortright Centre puts it, using PV cells for heating is “like using a chainsaw to cut butter”.
The problem with PV cells is that right now for most homeowners they don’t make sense economically. Waters says that the price of panels installed amortized over 20 years will be about 35 to 50 cents a killowatt-hour. Considerably higher than the artificially low 4.3 cents Ontarians are paying.
Canada and Ontario are moving forward with alternative energy initiatives but to give you a picture of how we are following — rather than leading — in 1999 Canada had 1,356 killowatts of installed PV power. Compare that to 100 megawatts (100,000 killowatts) in Germany and a whopping 2,000 megawatts in Japan. Currently Denmark leads the world in alternative energy getting a solid 15% of the country’s power requirements from renewable sources.
Despite the current costs Rob McMonagle, director of Canadian Solar Industries (CANSIA), is optimistic that costs will come down in the future: “There will be a time when the cost is competitive,” he says. “We aren’t there yet but we will be.”
WHAT’S COMING
The Ontario government’s Energy Action Plan includes, among other things, a rebate program for the installation of solar panels on 100,000 homes in the province. If the political will wasn’t powerful enough to get the Energy Action Plan in motion before the great blackout of 2003 it certainly is now.
There are other positive government programs as well. In June the federal government announced the National Home Retrofit Rebate Program based along the lines of the ongoing Toronto Greensaver Home Rewards Program. Both give those who retrofit their homes a rebate based on how much energy will be saved with the retrofits. The federal program boasts an average rebate of $1,000 and the Greensaver program has been providing an average of $850. The Greensaver program is in its final year and will be over by June 2004 or when the money runs out.
Businesses too are eligible for some large rebates to become more energy efficient. National Resources Canada will pay companies 25% up to $80,000 in rebates if they install active solar hot water or air heating systems.
There isn’t really any question which direction the world is going in terms of energy use — especially in light of the recent power outages in Canada and the U.S. And with international political instability and dwindling oil reserves even some of the more ardent oil barons are looking at alternative energy as the way of the future. BP and Shell are leading the way in terms of the big oil companies investing in wind and solar power.
According to the Bruntland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development from 1987, renewables will play a key role in the century we’ve just recently entered. To that end they declared: “The Commission believes that every effort should be made to develop the potential for renewable energy, which should form the foundation of the global energy structure for the 21st century.”
Next month look for a focus on another of those increasingly ubiquitous energy sources in the third installment in this alternative energy series: Wind.
• For info on Greensaver call (416) 203-3106 or visit www.greensaver.org
• For info on NRC initiatives visit www.nrcan.gc.ca/redi
• To download Ontario’s Energy Action Plan visit www.energy.gov.on.ca
• Other interesting and useful sites:
Home Power Magazine • www.homepower.com
SolarwallTM • www.solarwall.com
Camel’s Back Construction • www.strawhomes.ca
Kortright Centre • www.kortright.org
Solcan Ltd. • www.solcan.com
Canadian Solar Industries • www.cansia.ca
Toronto Atmospheric Fund • www.city.toronto.on.ca/taf