Offshore Oil Rigs are Walrus-Proof

At left are two conjoined off shore oil rigs. The whale seen venting in the foreground was cited for ruining the photo and released on his own cognizance. Hurricane Earl is headed toward us here on the Atlantic coast, and the best thing about Earl, according to those posted on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, is that Earl will be our problem, not theirs. Offshore drilling, under discussion and proposed to begin soon before BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, killed its crew, and began hemmorrhaging oil into the Gulf at a furious rate, is now suspended for the time being. Good call, DOE and President Obama.

   But what if Earl, as of this date threatening the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a prime area proposed for offshore oil drilling, were bearing down on hundreds of offshore rigs, as Katrina and Rita did in the Gulf five years ago? Over a hundred rigs were damaged or destroyed in that storm season, although no catastrophic spills were recorded on the scale of this year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. What would be the real impact of a big storm unfettered by the shore effects present in the Gulf, a storm free to go wild in the open sea?

  When my children were small, we vacationed for several years in the Outer Banks area, in a non-posh resort community I will not name but remember fondly. We swam, we waded, we walked the hot sands, we ate shrimp cooked in iced tea (a local speciality and acquired taste), we visited the dune shrine where the Wright brothers risked life, limb and their death of cold to keep a wild , Newton-defying contraption airborne for a few seconds. We carried our children out into the surf and dropped them into the roiling, emerald waves. We gazed out toward Europe across the farthest horizon and saw—– nothing. We also saw the erosive effects of recent storms and congratulated ourselves that we would soon return to New England, where we get a fraction of the storm activity of the Outer Banks, and most often weary storms that have already spent their strength on the lower Atlantic coast.

   Oil rigs offshore in the Atlantic? This link from the Christian Science Monitor of 05 describes the damage done by storms of that year to oil rigs in the  Gulf. It was scary. The two largest rigs in operation at the time were both damaged, one actually capsized. This link cites a common safety contractor and consulting firm hired by several oil companies to strategize spill control before Deepwater Horizon. The report did not go into detail about the not-yet-imagined Deepwater scenario. What it did was assure its clients that no significant impact would be felt in the indigenous walrus population. Goo goo gajoob. No walruses have been cited in the Gulf of Mexico since Rush Limbaugh fell off his yacht a while back, and not for ians and ians before that.

  If we can’t trust our energy suppliers to be governed by their better selves, then I for one am willing to let Energy Secretary Stephen Chu look into it and give me a thumbnail. As Shakespeare’s Beatrice said, I can see a church by daylight. What I don’t want to see is the Atlantic coast looking like the Caspian Sea viewed from the hills over Baku (see photo below). Or clouds of petroleum rolling in where my children used to play, and where their children will want to play, if they can.

Electric Tankless Water Heater Caveats

We’ve posted on tankless water heaters before, but an inquiry from a client prompts us to revisit some of our reservations about tankless units. Wonderful idea, of course, good for energy, wish i’d thought of it myself, and all; but do your homework and keep your eyes open. Claims made for tankless heaters are larger than they seem in real life.

  First, flow rate. You need at least three gallons per minute of hot water at 125 degrees fahrenheit to operate a laundry machine, dishwasher, shower, kitchen sink or any combination of two faucets or appliances in the house. if your teenager is in the shower and you go downstairs to start the dishwasher, you will be cited by Family Services in this litigious society, for cruelty to a teenager. Sharing the output of a tankless electric unit is dicey. And families living in multi-bathroom houses will, sooner or later, need to share that output.

   Second, power needs. The only electric tankless that begins to fill the bill for a family is something like the Bosch AE 125 . The power requirement of this water heater is app. 125 amps at full load. Do you have a 100 amp service feeding your entire house, as I do? Fuhgeddabouddit. You can’t install electric tankless in your house. Do you have a 200 amp service? Expect to give away 60% of that capacity while using hot water, which means that you can’t operate your electric range, air conditioning, and clothes dryer all in tandem with this water heater. You have to do what we call “load management,” in which you stop to think, ok, toaster is 110 watts, dryer 4500, range is 8000 unless I only use one burner, turn up the air conditioning thermostat, and,,,, ok, now we can do hot water. And if you have electric heat, you’ll have to shut some of it off to avoid an overload, even with a 200 amp service. No, you can’t have a 300 amp service on a house, not without paying lots of money. Perhaps in the “home of the future.”

   If it’s just two of you in the house, or if the kids only come home for Christmas, this all may work out well. You can save up to 25% over electric tank hot water by virtue of  lowering your standby costs (the expense of keeping the tank hot and losing heat to the surrounding air). If your house is large, full of kids, or if you have a big kitchen and you’re always in it, beware.

    Electric tankless water heaters are growing in popularity, and they should. But i’m always concerned when a past or potential client buys one off the internet and asks for a quote to install it. My bill for installation will commonly exceed the cost of the water heater, if indeed I can even shoehorn it into the house’s electrical system. Then I’m delivering the bad news, the phone goes “click,” and the unhappy client is off down the road to a plumbing company which knows not-so-much about electrical loading and is willing to take the client’s money for installing an inadequately sized unit. Happens several times a year.

  Other technologies are more practical. Oil, natural gas, LP gas, almost any fuel other than electric power makes for a better performance in water heating, due to the ability of those fuels to deliver larger amounts of energy instantaneously to the water, exceeding electricity by far in the critical category of  “recovery rate.”  Watch your loading, watch your pricing, beware of claims made by salesmen bearing gifts, and consider all  your options. Sometimes a heavy insulation blanket and a simple timer can turn an old electric tank into a lean, mean green machine, for a lot less money.

American (Wind) Technology Will Save the World (?)

 The device in the picture looks like a hubcap, I know. Is what it is is, it’s the single most encouraging breakthrough in small-output wind-powered electrical generation since, I don’t know, maybe Ben Franklin. The engineering genius of the Honeywell Wind Turbine is a bit over my head, but I’m an old electrician, and I know a superior motor when I see one: replaceable vanes for easy maintenance, vane orientation works with off-angle winds (obviating pivot bearings), weighs app. 170 lb. with six foot diameter, threshold generating begins at two mph wind speed, and the field windings are in the rim, out where turbine speed produces the greatest possible inductive force. Recommended minimum mounting height is 33 feet (the roof of a two-story American house with attic, roughly) and the retail package is self-contained, with inverter, charge controller and safety switches right in the box. Suggested retail price $6495 US. I found them being marketed at $4500 US, plus shipping. The Honeywell turbine will be marketed, initially, through Ace Hardware retail stores, and its output is estimated at app. 2750 kilowatt-hours/year in winds ranging from 2 mph to 42 mph. Depending upon your local utility rate, that probably means $$300 US or so in energy savings, all put back on the grid, operating, unlike solar PV, 24 hours a day, whenever the wind blows. Service life is estimated at twenty years, with a manufacturer’s five-year warranty. This technology didn’t come from China, it didn’t come from Europe, locations where energy is a higher priority socially and politically. It came from Honeywell’s R&D in the great USA, where innovation has for two hundred years been only one of the things we offer to a hungry global economy. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys, Willie Nelson sang. For heaven’s sake, encourage them to be engineers and researchers.

Photovoltaic Panels and Shade- Deadly Enemy

A prime parameter in the specs for photovoltaic system installation in the Connecticut Clean Energy guidelines refers to shading of the panels: to wit, no shading allowed during the normal “solar day,” reckoned to be between 9 Am and 3 Pm. It’s a pretty stiff requirement here in tree-covered New England, and it may seem unfair to disqualify a potential roof site because a tree shades it for part of the day. But here, in  brief, is the danger of shading and the logic behind zero tolerance for it.

A solar PV array is configured in “strings,” or source circuits, of two to 12 panels, according to system voltage. The string of panels is connected from one to the other via the connected module leads so that the current through the string is constant, and the voltage of each module adds up to the nominal system voltage, anywhere from 24 volts for small battery-connected systems to nearly 5oo volts for high-output grid-tie systems. And in that string, or series circuit, a little patch of shade can limit the current of the entire string to a small fraction of capacity. Diodes are installed to permit current to bypass shaded or malfunctioning modules or cells, but the effect is still significant on performance.

  Shading analysis in the planning stages is critical to predictable and maximum performance. If an area selected for panel installation is shaded, the time and extent of the shading must be calculated and deducted from the expected output of the system. Sometimes module choices are affected by shading analysis; “amorphous” crystalline cells are slightly more shade tolerant than other module types.

 Non-grid tie systems suffer at least as much, if not more than grid-tied arrays. If batteries are matched to the output of the array, a small shaded area alerts the Maximum Power Point Tracking device in the inverter, which senses the efficiency and total output of the system, simply shuts down and waits for the shading to pass. For the duration of the shading, the system sits idle.

   Shade analysis, then, is a vital part of planning when photovoltaic arrays are being sited on rooftops or on the ground. The panel manufacturers and government agencies aren’t kidding when they say that zero shading is the proper amount. And we, installing professionals, may be advising you to trim or remove trees, or purchase costly racking systems to relieve shading conflicts; we’re not just upselling the job. Shade is your enemy in the solar game, whether it’s for hot water or photovoltaics. And for photovoltaics, a little shade can be deadly.

Tight is the Best Possible Green for Windows, Doors

The infrared photo at left shows radiant heat loss (yellow and red shading) in a typical residential window and door. It also reveals that the most grievous heat loss (purple, violet, almost black shading) takes place around the trim and edges of the opening. This is air infiltration, and it is your deadly enemy in keeping your house warm and dry and free of mold.

We’ve posted before on the hazards of air infiltration and moisture, and we’ve urged you all to arm yourselves with caulk, foam in cans, and sticky weatherstripping to fight the crannies that permit heat to escape and air to come in while you’re trying to heat or cool your house. Only in temperate spring and fall weather here in New England do we blithely throw open our windows and share the environment indoors and outdoors. In either high summer or deepest winter the potential for unpleasant temperatures and moisture accumulations indoors and makes climate control increasingly not just a luxury.

Enter the capitalist economy. Don’t fuss about with all that caulk and foam, say the strident voices on the radio and television; we can change your house’s energy performance in a jiffy with 1. new energy-efficient vinyl replacement windows, 2. new energy-efficient vinyl storm doors front and rear, 3. safe, energy-efficient blown-in insulation in attic and walls, no damage to your interior, 4. new, safe, “permanent” energy-efficient vinyl siding with optional foam insulation backing to save you lots of energy and money. And they take credit cards, and they have financial experts standing by to mortgage your house for the full amount.

No sudden moves, now. Will replacement windows perform startingly better than the wooden sash windows or vinyl double-hung you have now? Not if you reduce or eliminate air leakage ( infiltration) through and around your old windows. Then your old windows will perform nearly as well as any window on the market, give or take 15%. Surprised? Same story with the blown-in insulation and the vinyl siding. The best deal of the lot is the vinyl storm windows and doors. They reduce infiltration almost completely through your entry doors. The rest of the “home improvements” won’t pay for themselves any time soon.

The article linked here is from Journal of Light Construction on the subject of replacement windows and their rate of payback based on improved energy performance. The math doesn’t work. It takes a LONG time to payback the investment on new windows, doors, siding, and blown-in insulation. What takes a SHORT time to pay back? Anything that tightens your house, closes cracks, tightens doors and windows, and reduces air infiltration in and out. That’s the magic of home energy. Air. Stop it going in and out, you stop energy from being stolen from your house and your budget.

The boring conclusion is:  nothing makes as big a difference in your house as caulk, foam and weatherstripping. Big ticket stuff like windows and viny siding works, eventually. But caulk and foam and gummy weatherstrip work today. If you hire a remodeler, handyman or do it yourself, it still works if you do it right. And it’s not too hard. Don’t hock the ranch before you’ve done the chores, ok?

Today’s Science Project, Tomorrow’s Energy Source

There are three listings in the Southeastern Connecticut Yellow Pages under “Solar Contractors.” There are 876 approved applications to date for rebates under the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund program, for a total connected capacity of 4 megawatts. That will power 8000 small houses during peak daylight hours, if it all gets used efficiently. For a few hours on the sunniest days. There is one photovoltaic installation within easy driving distance of my home in North Stonington. The Connecticut Clean Energy Rebate program is shut down until July of 2010 for “financial review.”

Solar is not setting the world on fire here in Connecticut, is the point. The approved leasing program that allows homeowners to join the energy revolution does not convey the tax credits and rebates available to those buying their equipment. You just get to sell the power back to the grid, defraying your power bill by a fraction, depending upon your usage. Oil is cheap, to those who have any money at all, and the outcry for alternative energy sources is down to a murmur, mostly heard from the same folks who have been calling for change since Jimmy Carter funded the first rebate program for solar in the 70s.

If solar power, both for hot water and electricity, is to catch on in the mind of the public, we need a consciousness-raising experience, preferably several.

So how about small solar that you can give Dad as a Christmas gift, a kit of panels, inverter and batteries that he can assemble in the garage or basement, set out in the back yard, and start calculating the incoming watts from the sun? You can’t hook these small kits up to the grid, for many reasons, but you can run a light or two, power a tool, charge the battery on the car, operate landscape lighting, or operate a decorative fountain pump. Use your creative side here.

These links to various vendors who package and ship the equipment, with many disclaimers, right to your door. Target has kits on the shelf. One of the vendors linked above will sell you a kit to power the whole house, even go on the grid if all your permits are lined up. The amounts of power are tiny, ranging from 10 to 75 watts per hour, but the principle is real, and the operation is only a scaled-down version of huge systems sitting on commercial and residential roofs where public conscioiusness has been raised already.

Perhaps we ony need to toy with these concepts for a few years before we’re ready to accept the value of photovoltaics as significant contributors to Connecticut’s energy picture. Perhaps a science project or two will get us into the game, or at least thinking in the right direction. Read the instructions, be very careful, and let me know how it turns out…..

Compact Fluorescents- serve me a dish of crow

 Guess how many of the bulbs in the photo are energy-efficient compact fluorescents?  Yes, of course it’s a trick… ok, all of them, smartypants. And that’s the point of this post: to retract my longstanding opposition to compact fluorescent bulbs, and to get you to take a fresh look at a new generation of energy-efficient lighting that saves money while still doing the job well.

About fifteen years ago compact fluorescent lights appeared on my contractor’s radar; clients were asking about them, the public utility was hawking them in discount programs, and I was the stodgy old guy telling everyone to wait, the product wasn’t really up to the challenge, and removing the fixtures people insisted on buying in a rosy glow of greenness. The dim, harsh, flickering, watery, slow-to-light fluorescents that were supposed to change the world and lower our power bills have been a terrible disappointment, as this George Will essay sarcastically details.

And I, monsieur energy contractor, installing the latest in efficient heating and cooling equipment, and the best in automated home lighting systems that turn off when not needed to save money, was the naysayer who steered everyone away from the latest trends in alternative lighting.

Until now. it’s time to retract, and I’m doing it publicly. This link is to a catalog site showing many styles and brilliances of fluorescent and LED lighting, and while there are still caveats restraining the homeowner from believing every claim that GE and Phillips make for their new bulbs, I’m changing my stance and coming out for compact fluorescent retrofit bulbs, the ones that can be screwed into an old-style socket to replace an incandescent bulb.

The quality of the light is still “variable.” If you choose the “daylight” or “soft white” color options at the home store, you’ll probably be satisfied with the color and warmth of the light, even if it’s a bit whiter than your old incandescent bulbs.

The intensity is appropriate to the fixture. Compact fluorescents are now prominently labeled for their “lumen” output, a more telling measure than the old “watts” per bulb number. Buy a bulb equal to the lumen output of your old bulb, whatever the wattage, and you’ll get enough light. Notice, while you’re doing that, that your new fluorescent retrofit bulb costs as much as ten times what you’ve been paying for incandescent light bulbs, and is rated to last as much as twenty times as long; and this time they’re probably telling the truth. Older fluorescent retrofits were shorter-lived and grew dimmer as they aged.

Are all compact fluorescent bulbs created equal? No, sorry. Beware of those not costing significantly more than incandescents, and stick to brands like Phillips and GE rather than those packages which clearly indicate their foreign manufacture and sport suspiciously lower prices. The technology you’re paying for is not cheap, and you’ll be disappointed with the cheapest fluorescent retrofits. Check this Popular Mechanics link to a shootout test. Be told, as Granny used to say.

Environmental concerns? They’re real. Compact fluorescents contain a small dose of mercury, which poses no threat unless the bulb is broken. Incandescents are also not safe when broken, so all the same warnings apply. When the dog knocks over the lamp, shoo the kids out of the room and use the vacuum; carefully. Here’s an Energy Star data sheet to help you.

And how do the numbers work out? They work. A compact fluorescent using twelve watts of power competes with an incandescent 60 watt bulb for performance, lasts many times as long, and costs five or six dollars rather than 5o cents. That’s twenty five percent of the power, with a service life that works out as a bargain even ignoring the energy savings.

We’ve blogged before about LED  bulbs, and expressed our reservations. We still harbor those reservations. Maybe we’ll visit that topic soon.. Until then, you can go to the big box store, or a good supermarket, and buy the compact fluorescents with confidence. Use them in lights you leave on a lot, not your basement or your closets. Then they’ll do you some real good. And I’m replacing the incandescents at my house, too. We walk what we talk……

More Hot Water Options, and My Favorite

The photo is borrowed from a charming blog post dealing with gender differences in showering styles. But we’re here to wrap up, for now, the subject of domestic hot water options for energy conscious homeowners.

We’ve talked about tankless water heaters, solar water heaters, electric tanks and furnace coils. Here are a few more to round out the picture for you.

If you have a coil in your oil or gas fired  boiler, you might consider upgrading to an indirect hot water tank. There are two styles, one in which boiler water fills the tank, and one in which boiler water fills only a coil in the tank. My favorite is the former, for efficiency. This link is for an excellent design by Dunkirk. The boiler is relieved of its duty to stay hot as heck all the time, running only when a tank thermostat calls for it to warm up the tank, or when hot water is being used. You save considerable on “standby losses” and seldom experience a delay of hot water due to the tank’s capacity. The insulation of the tank makes it a better reservoir for heat, and you can over-wrap it yourself and do even better.

There is also the option of putting the oil burner right under the tank and heating it up directly. A “direct fired hot water heater” is a tank sitting over a firebox with a burner and a flue. Standby losses are a bit greater with the direct design, but the recovery rate of the tank temperature is amazing, and it’s hard to run out of hot water even with teenagers in the house.

I recommend you use the link and look at what Energy Kinetics has done with the concept of hot water production and standby losses. Their systems are pricey and require considerable expertise to install correctly, but the savings give you an accelerated payback over the classic cast iron boiler with internal hot water coil. A smart controller starts the low mass (low mass, low volume, quick heatup, small amount of energy trapped in boiler upon shutdown) stainless boiler up cold, turns on a circulator to respond to heating needs, and circulates boiler water through a flat plate heat exchanger piped outside of the boiler. domestic hot water is heated in one pass, or a separate circulator warms a well insulated storage tank to provide water that doesn’t fluctuate much in temperature (this temperature fluctuation is the most common complaint from boiler coil people, other than high energy costs). At the end of a heating/hot water cycle, the boiler circulator stays on until the heat has been “dumped” into a waiting zone or the hot water tank. Not much gets wasted. I seldom directly plug a company in this blog, but no one else is doing exactly what Energy Kinetics is doing, and I think they’re ahead of their time in a notoriously sluggish industry in a notoriously energy-spoiled culture. Good for them.

Next post I’ll talk about the system I just installed in my own house, a real pound puppy of assembled energy efficient components crafted to my own design. Stay with us……  meanwhile, if you’d like to discuss your own options for upgrading your hot water system, hit the contact link and i’ll be happy to respond.

Ductless Split Air Conditioners – Practically Perfect

If your home has a large open space built around, perhaps, the kitchen, dining room and den, or the newfangled Great Room concept, you can render that space comfortable without sacrificing your windows or paying big sums for some guy like me to install a full duct network for a central system. You can have a “ductless split” system installed, operate it from a handy remote, and cool the large living area of your house in respectable silence.

Window units are noisy and take up window openings. Central systems are the best, but can you afford one right now? Like the incumbent Democratic administration, I favor a considered compromise when all factors can be weighed.  I don’t favor any single brand, but i do insist that you shop for these essentals:  high efficiency, ample capacity, multiple fan speeds, and a good warrantee. Here are some links, offered without partiality for your consideration. Here’s a multi-brand site, another one, and a brand or two of the better ones. 

To find an installer, you may have to call around, use the Yellow Pages, and ask at the wholesaler’s, because not all techs are familiar with the subtle ways of the ductless split. Expect the job to take less than a day, and expect to be cool by dinnertime. The hardest part is tying the electric power into your panel, a process that may require a licensed electrician. Be sure to ask if your installer does the wiring himself.

The thermostat’s in the remote, the filter is the washable kind, and the condenser is as energy-efficient as the outdoor unit of a central system, and a bit more efficient than any window unit you can buy. Ductless split is less noisy than window units, slightly more noisy than central, typically.

Here in New England, we have the possible need for home air conditioning, I tell my clients, of about 100 days per year. Most folks use their air conditioning between 40 and 60 days, unless a bust of ralph nader adorns your mantel and you’re reading this while completely naked. How much will it cost to get you through the summer? Can you hide in your bedroom next to the window unit? Do you need the whole house cooled and dried to accommodate your teenagers and your expansive tush sticking to your naugahyde recliner? Or somewhere in between? If you’d like to get comfortable in the dining room and huddle around the table like millennial Waltons being cool, and if you’re tempted to break out the sleeping bags and have a camping adventure on the family room carpet, you could be enjoying your ductless split system by, say, tomorrow night.

3 KWH Per Square Meter Per Day — Absolutely Free

My roof, the southerly facing side, measures roughly 800 square feet. That’s about 75 square meters. According to the formula in the title, it calculates to 225 kilowatt hours per day.  And that’s a modest view of the potential of solar power on my rooftop, and yours, and everyone’s. Just in New England. In Florida and New Mexico it’s almost twice as much.

My house, one in which power is used moderately by American standards, consumes an average of 20 kilowatt hours per day. No electric heat, average range of appliances, lights used one or two rooms at a time, cooking done mostly with microwaves, air conditioning used very sparingly. Twenty kilowatt hours needed, 225 kilowatt hours potential from roof insolation. Twenty needed, 225 available. Twenty, two hundred twenty five. And your roof? And your neighbor’s? And a three-family apartment house? And a row of condominiums? Same figures, depending upon roof orientation. And more, usually, as you move south and west, outside New England and our famously changeable weather.

How, then, to collect it? And store it? And share it with other users in the vicinity who have changing needs? It costs about sixty thousand pre-rebate dollars to put panels on the roof, install an inverter and tie it to the grid. Your share would be app. 38,000 dollars, financeable via home equity, low interest loan, or cash if you deal drugs. Or have equity left in your house. Or if you qualify for a low-interest government-backed loan. And then only if you own your home. And the capacity of that expensive photovoltaic system will be only a fraction of the potential of your roof’s solar energy load, Less than half. And your daily contribution to the grid will be most of your home’s power usage. Only most.

It’s a dim picture, but not dark. The tax credits and rebates do not yet put photovoltaic power in the reach of average Americans of average means. And the contractors are charging princely sums for their systems, and the paperwork for the Clean Energy Fund’s credits is burdensome, and the systems tend to pay back at a rate that I, for one, won’t live to see, and the panels last thirty years in sunlight by a maximum estimate, twenty is a more conservative figure, and the grid doesn’t store the energy, it just distributes it among all connected customers.

So many things are not yet quite right about our approach to solar power. But we’ve begun. and demand does eventually affect supply, and the storage problem will be addressed, and there will be panels on most/every/many/your roof. Soon enough to save the planet? Sooner would be better, don’t you think? More next time.