Marathon Renewable Energy invited to attend energy audit training

The Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation (WECC), the parent corporation behind Focus on Energy, typically only offers one Energy Auditor training course per year - usually in the spring. But this year, due to a push from the Feds, they decided to open up an additional session in the Fall - invitation-only.

We're proud to announce that Dan received his invitation this week and will be attending the training in October. Upon completion, he'll be qualified as an Energy Auditor in the State of Wisconsin - thus bringing an additional, much-requested service to our Central Wisconsin customers!

A New Solar PV Installer in Town

It's been a little lonely around here the past couple of weeks. That's because Dan's been out in Colorado, finishing up his photovoltaics training at Solar Energy International (SEI).

I just tried reaching him on his cell phone and couldn't get through, but according to the syllabus he should have just graduated as a certified PV installer about an hour ago.

Dan will be swinging through Kansas City to visit his mom on the way back up to Wisconsin. Bet she's proud of him!

Solar Power Flies High

No, we're not branching out into aviation. This has nothing to do with us, but it's so cool I just had to pass it on.

Last month Solar Impulse unveiled a prototype aircraft designed to fly day and night with zero emissions and no fossil fuel. The Solar Impulse HB-SIA has a wingspan as wide as a Boeing 747-400 but only weighs 3,500 lb. - about as much as a typical car. And it's powered entirely by the over 12,000 solar cells mounted on the wing.

They've scheduled several test flights during the second half of 2009.

We may not be flying solar business class any time soon, but it's exciting technology to follow. And it just goes to prove how powerful solar energy can be.

The Right Approach to Solar Space Heating

We've had a lot of people approach us lately about solar space heating.

Solar heating is a great idea. It’s good for the environment, effective if done right, safe, comfortable and can be extremely cost-effective over the lifetime of the system. It can even have a reasonably short payback, even at today’s prices.

But don’t try to knock high heat bills down with solar heat. Knock them down instead with air sealing, insulation, and better windows and doors.

Why? Because these measures are far more cost effective than putting in solar panels. In fact, every dollar spent on insulation, better doors, etc. will save you four dollars on a solar heating system. That’s because you can get away with a much smaller – and less expensive - solar installation when you have a more energy-efficient home to begin with. (It’s similar to making a car more aerodynamic so that you can put in a smaller, less expensive engine.) And the energy-saving measures will also cut down on the amount you spend on backup heat.

Pare down the amount of heat you're losing first, then let's talk about reducing heating bills with solar.

Energy Fair Attendance Highest Ever

If you don't see hordes of people in the 2009 Energy Fair photo at left, it's because I snapped it early in the day just before the hordes arrived. Believe me, for most of the weekend the scene was hopping!

I just got off the phone with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's home office in Custer. They confirmed what we all expected - this year's Energy Fair attendance was the best ever. To be precise, the tally of attendees came to a grand total of 23,206 - about 5% more than last year's record-breaking number.

Congratulations to the MREA for an outstanding job of promoting renewable energy and sustainable living!

Microsoft Announces Free Energy Usage Application

The first step to saving energy is figuring out where you're losing it. Here's a new product that may help you do just that:

Microsoft Corp. recently announced Microsoft Hohm, an online application designed to enable consumers to better understand their energy usage, get recommendations and start saving money. The beta application is available at no cost to anyone in the United States with an Internet connection and can be accessed directly by visiting http://www.microsoft-hohm.com.

Microsoft Hohm provides savings recommendations, which can range from placing new caulking on windows to removing air leaks to installing a programmable thermostat. These recommendations are reportedly tailored based on specific circumstances in the consumer's home including house features, usage patterns and appliances. If consumers don't provide their data, Microsoft Hohm will base its recommendations on local and national averages. According to the company, Microsoft Hohm will leverage the energy usage data and feedback from its users to refine and improve the accuracy and relevancy of recommendations.

Source: Clean Edge, Inc.

Too bad about the sales tax...

Well, looks like we'll have to wait another couple years for the sales tax exemption for solar and other renewable energy equipment. Governor Doyle went ahead and passed the bill.

You can't win 'em all!

Sales on renewable energy equipment are now slated to become tax exempt on July 1, 2011.

Renewable Energy Sales Tax Exemption in Jeopardy

Renewable energy equipment was to be exempted from sales tax in Wisconsin beginning next month - but due to budget cutting proposals the exemption is slated for a two-year delay - unless Governor Doyle vetos the proposal.

Below is the text of a letter hand-delivered to Governor Doyle's office today by RENEW Wisconsin to encourage him to veto the delay. You can help too by going to the Governor's website http://www.wisgov.state.wi.us/contact.asp?locid=19 and asking him to support renewable energy in Wisconsin by vetoing the delay proposal. (I am also including the email I sent him just a few minutes ago.

June 26, 2009

Governor James E. Doyle

115 East, State Capitol
P.O. Box 7863
Madison, Wisconsin 53707

Dear Governor Doyle:

RENEW Wisconsin and its members across the state respectfully request a veto of the budget bill provision that would delay the effective date of the sales and use tax exemption for equipment powered by or used in the generation of wind and solar energy and manure digesters from July 1, 2009, until July 1, 2011.

Though the sales tax exemption might seem of little economic importance to a planned installation, the amount could significantly change a project’s economic feasibility, depending on installation size. For instance, the sales tax on a 50 kilowatt wind turbine that costs $250,000 would come to at least $12,500. That would add several years to the project’s payback.

This year Wisconsin businesses and homeowners have planned and bid on renewable energy systems based on system costs that include the sales tax exemption. Some would-be system owners have delayed their installation in anticipation of the sales tax exemption. Repealing this exemption on such short notice will result in project cancellations and delays.

Customer-owned wind and solar systems will contribute toward the renewable energy needed to achieve a 25% target by 2025. Please keep us moving toward the target by vetoing the delayed effective date for the sales tax exemption.

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

Michael Vickerman

Executive Director

RENEW Wisconsin

Dear Governor Doyle,

I am writing to respectfully request that you support renewable energy by vetoing the proposed delay in sales tax exemption for renewable energy systems in Wisconsin.

Our energy future is uncertain. I know you have to juggle many things as you make the decisions that sculpt our future. But please consider this: At present almost our entire infrastructure - from the way we get around to the heat for our homes to the very food on our table - is heavily dependent on fossil fuel.

What will happen when the oil stops flowing?

And when will that be?

Nobody knows.

But I do know this - no one will suffer if we've prepared for the worst way earlier than we need to.

But if that day comes before we think it will - and it very well might - then I hate to imagine the consequences.

Privately owned renewable energy systems can make a significant contribution towards a safer future for the citizens of Wisconsin. But it's a big commitment. Every incentive helps bring more clean energy systems online.

At the Renewable Energy Fair last weekend in Custer I had the privilege of speaking to a great number of people. Invariably those from outside Wisconsin remarked about how progressive and forward-thinking our state is in terms of its support for renewables.

Mr. Doyle, please uphold Wisconsin's tradition of forward-thinking renewable energy policy and veto the delayed effective date for sales tax exemption on renewable energy.

Thank you,

Anne Michelsen

In case you missed it...

Check out Dan's mug gracing the cover of the June 11-18th City Pages! He was introduced as the first certified solar hot water system installer in Marathon County in an article about this year's Energy Fair.

Renewable Energy Fair a Success!

We haven't heard the numbers yet, but attendance at this year's Midwest Renewable Energy Fair was expected to blow away last year's record-breaking 22,500+ total. If the degree of hoarseness in our voices by the end of the 3-day event was any indication, it surely did!

The weather was nearly perfect, and interest in all things renewable was high. Many people I talked to were attending the Fair for the first time. If that was you, right on! Glad you made it!

Manning the booth was a lot less exhausting than I thought it would be. It was exhilarating to talk to so many people who really care about making a difference, and to meet and reconnect with others in the renewable energy field. We're already looking forward to next year!

Focus on Energy Full Service Solar Thermal Installer!

We're good to go - as of May 28th Marathon Renewable Energy has been listed on the Focus on Energy Solar Thermal Full Service Installer list.

This means that we are eligible to submit pre-approval forms to Focus on Energy for review by their solar thermal staff. Ultimately, it means that our customers will receive rewards checks when installations are completed and pass the performance test.

Success

We filled Al Henrick's solar loop on Saturday night. Night is best to prevent steam from forming. The big delay was running the electric power to the pumps from a remote PV panel. Today was the first sunny day after filling and the system worked flawlessly. By the time I left around 1:30, standard time not daylight time, the tank was around 120 degrees F. The coldest water off the bottom of the tank was 114 degrees, and the heat exchanger was returning 124 degree water to the center of the tank. This was a cold start since the system had never run before, and the starting temperature was around 55-58 degrees.

It was interesting to listen to the pumps slow down and speed up as clouds reduced the output of the PV panel and then moved away. I worked on the insulation for a little while, and the tank rose from 84 degrees when I arrived around 11:00 standard time to the 114 degrees I mentioned earlier by the time I left. The storage tank holds 105 gallons, so this is a substantial rise in temperature. All we need to do now is finish up insulating the elbows and other fittings, and then install jacketing on the exterior insulation to protect it from UV rays and we are DONE!

Dan Michelsen

Just got back from attending the Energy Center of Wisconsin's Better Buildings Better Business Conference Wisconsin Dells.

Boy was that place buzzing with great ideas! Just a quick wander through the trade show area was enough to make your head spin - and the gears inside that head start spinning with possibilities. To list just a few resource-saving innovations:

* The Green Switch, a brand-new device that saves you having to individually unplug or turn off all your power strips, appliances and lights when not in use in your most power-hungry rooms

* Structural Insulated Panels - basically big styrofoam sheets sandwiched between pressboard, which eliminate the need for studs. They're supposed to result in leak-free constuction and result in a 50% more efficient building. It's available in 4 thicknesses with R values from R-18 to R-40.

* The Solatube, a high-tech skylight that effectively brings daylight into hard-to-reach places

* Rain catchment and greywater recycling systems; super-efficient windows; a souped-up Prius (a plug-in hybrid equipped with lithium-ion batteries such as you'll find in the newest power tools; it's a fleet car owned by WPPI Energy; financing options for homeowners considering energy-efficient upgrades (more on this in future posts); and a whole lot more.

By the way, the Kalahari resort, where the conference took place, is home to Wisconsin's largest solar thermal installation. We figure this impressive project is saving the Kalahari about $15,000 per year in water heating expenses. (The picture above shows just a few of the 104 panels in the installation.)

Better Buildings Conference

The Energy Center University's Better Buildings Conference kicks off this Wednesday evening, March 4 at the Kalahari Resort with a welcome reception from 4-7 PM.

I'll be missing the reception, but plan to dig in to the rest of the conference on Thursday and Friday.

The conference features practical, skills-based workshops and presentations on green building topics by nationally-recognized home building professionals. Presenters on the hot water front include Niels Wolter, Bobbi Fey and Kari Heinrich from Focus on Energy, Dan's mentor Bob Ramlow from the Artha Sustainable Living Center LLC, Kurt Koepp from Hot Water Products, and others.

There will also be plenty of great information on other topics, ranging from zero-energy buildings to retrofitting older homes.

I'm looking forward to soaking it all up and meeting others in Wisconsin's sustainable building community!

On, Wisconsin! Sales Tax Exemption for Renewables

How's this for progressive? Starting in July 2009, wind, solar, and anaerobic digester systems will be exempt from sales and use tax in the State of Wisconsin.

To be eligible, a system must produce at least 200 watts of alternating current or 600 British thermal units per day. Even most small residential systems should have no trouble meeting these requirements.

But don't try to take it to illogical extremes. The sales tax exemption does not extend to "receipts from the sale of and the storage, use, or other consumption of electricity or energy" you may receive as a result of owning your system.

Stimulus Bill Good News for Solar Thermal

Whatever your opinion of the latest government bailout plan, it's good news for you if you're thinking about investing in a solar water heating system for your home. A provision in last week's stimulus package lifts the $2,000 cap on tax incentives for residential solar hot water.

Homeowners are now eligible for a full 30% federal tax credit on solar thermal installations, regardless of the total cost of the system.

After weeks of working only for a few hours on good weather days, and fighting defective and incorrect parts, AL Henricks solar water heater is piped in, pressure checked, and ready to fill with glycol water mix.

First there must be power available for the pumps, so the glyol does not stagnate and degrade in the collectors. As soon as the wire can be run, the system can be filled. This is a major milestone for Marathon Renewable Energy, Inc.

Dan Michelsen

USDA Rural Energy for America Program

Are you an agricultural producer or business owner located in a rural area or small town (population < 50,000?) Are you looking into investing in energy conservation and/or renewable energy? If so, you may qualify for a grant or guaranteed loan through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

We'll let you know what's available in more detail in our next post. The USDA will be releasing details next month. In the meantime, you can check out the USDA site at http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/farmbill/index.html, or give Dan a call at 218-8654. (He just took a seminar on the program!)

-Anne Michelsen

Solar Thermal vs. Ground Source Heat Pumps

We recently had a request to address the differences between ground source heat pumps, and solar themal heating. My first reaction is that the comparison is an apples to oranges comparison, or maybe apples to walnuts.



Ground source heat pumps work the same way an air conditioner or refrigerator or freezer works. Coolant is compressed, making it hot. The heat is taken away to heat the house, and the coolant is decompressed making it cold. The cold fluid is heated by exchanging heat with ground water, or a closed loop in the ground. Then the process is repeated. This is simply reversing the function of an air conditioner.



Ground source heat pump advocate claim efficiencies of up to 600%. (And no this does not violate the laws of thermodynamics.) I am very skeptical of the highest numbers used, but let's use 400% a number I found on an indusry promotional website, and do some arithmetic.



Power plants are aproximately 33% efficient. This means that 33% of the potential energy in the coal makes it to the final step of the conversion process to electricity. About 10% of the power is lost in transmission, so the final number for plant and grid efficiency is around 30%.



If we assume 400% efficiency this leaves the final efficiency of the heat pump system at about 120%. This means that 120% of the potential heat in the coal winds up as heat in your home. If the coal were burned on site, you could expect efficiencies of around 60-80%. So the heat pump is a more efficient way to heat your house with coal. Coal is the dirtiest burning fuel we have in terms of carbon.



Natural gas at 90% efficiency puts less CO2 into the air than even a 400% efficient heat pump. Why? The gas is burned on site to produce heat. The gas also contains hydrogen which is combusted into water vapor, not CO2. The process is simple and direct. For the heat pump coal is burned to produce heat to convert water to steam to drive a turbine to turn a generator to produce electricity which is transmitted through a grid, stepped down, and used to turn a motor to drive a compressor to power the heat pump. Any time energy changes form there are significant losses. The final step of 400% efficiency simply overcomes previous losses putting the final number not that far removed from more conventional technologies. Also more energy is required to move the coal around than the natural gas.



The operational cost is less. This is because coal is cheap, not some great efficiency of the system. Installation cost are high, and depending on the design require extensive excavation. (Deisel backhoes).



Theoretically if the electricity were green, the process makes sense. Reality comes into play here. We get most of our electric power from coal. Could you power it with PV? YES! But this is not cost effective. PV is 15% efficient at best, so you could get up to 60% of the suns energy into the house using the heat pumps touted 400% efficiency. So what's the problem?



Thermal panels harvest well in excess of 50% of the sun's energy in the form of heat. Installed costs are less than 1/3 PV's so for the same amount of money you could install 3 times the collector area and still get three times the heat you would get from a PV powered heat pump, without the cost of the heat pump system.



What makes this an apples to walnuts comparison is the nature of the technology itself. Once installed the Solar Thermal system provides FREE heat which is carbon free. But the sun does not always shine, so for long cloudy periods solar thermal needs to be backed up by storage or conventional heating. The heat pump always works, relaibly heating your home with high efficiency coal heat day in and day out.



The best solutions to the problems presented by the need for heating are not to be found in the USA, but in Europe. The Germans have developed a standard called Passive Haus. The Passive Haus has a minimum of R60 on all sides of the building envelope, extremely low air infiltration, high efficiency windows and doors, and a heat recovery ventilator. These building need so little heat that a heating system is not required. Small amounts of heat do need to be added to the make up air to keep the building comfortable. This is easily supplied by 2 or 3 solar thermal panels most of the time. The backup can be conventional electrical resistance heating, because the electricity consumed is so small that a ground source heat pump would never pay for itself in savings.


For new construction, Passiv Haus is the way to go. We are currently working on an old house moving in the direction of Passive Haus to see if we can come close to this standard on a retrofit. Pair Passive Haus with Solar Thermal heat and you have the closest thing available today to a sustainable system.

My parting thought for the day is a trick question. Why can't you build an Energy Star (the government program for certifying energy efficiency) house in Europe?

Because Energy Star standards do not even come close to meeting the minimum energy standards in Europe.

Dan Michelsen

Solar Thermal Tax Credit Caps

A couple of posts ago I wrote that the rebate caps on residential solar had been lifted starting in 2009. The information came from what is usually a reliable source, but as it was there was some confusion about the topic in the weeks following the passing of the renewable energy bill last fall.

Turns out the cap was lifted for PV, but not for solar thermal. Too bad - it reflects true ignorance of the real value of solar thermal.

Even so, solar water heating remains an economically attractive renewable energy source - even in Wisconsin.

See our website ( www.MarathonRenewableEnergy.com ) for more information on solar water heating in Wisconsin - or call us at 715-218-8654 and Dan will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the topic. (Be sure to set aside a chunk of time - he's kind of like a walking encyclopedia.)

No More Question Marks

Hallelujah! Dan finally announced today that he's found a source for the unions he needs for fitting pipes - which ends a months-long quest to find supply sources for the various parts needed to install solar water heating systems on a large-scale basis.

Solar thermal guru Bob Ramlow tipped him off that Caleffi, a European solar products manufacturer, makes the elusive part. Hot Water Products, our distributor in Milwaukee, carries Caleffi products, but had been unable to locate that particular part. Turns out it wasn't listed in the catalog - but it is available!

Bob also relayed the information that Nibco makes an acceptable copper/brass union, if you dope it up really well. Those are available at most large hardware outlets.

(I never would have guessed finding parts would be such a challenge. Funny what you learn when you're in business!)

In any case, now we have at least one supplier for every item needed. That will make future projects MUCH easier to implement!