Residential Solar and Wind Energy Questions

[You Need a Thneed]

Sites that may be of interest:

Net Zero house in Edmonton - Grid Tied House, House uses NO natural gas, the net electrical bill for one year comes out to $0.

Home builder in Calgary that installs Geothermal systems - combined with solar water heat.

Wind Power is going to be significantly cheaper than solar power, though it's not as maintenance free as solar.

If you want to go solar though, look into both solar electric and solar water heat.

[jolinar of malkshor]

One thing that I have found is the difficulty in finding all the rebates and subsides for energy efficent buildings and products. If anyone knows any of these sites, grants or rebates can you please post it.

Thanks

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by jolinar of malkshor

One thing that I have found is the difficulty in finding all the rebates and subsides for energy efficent buildings and products. If anyone knows any of these sites, grants or rebates can you please post it.

Thanks

If you are in Alberta:

http://www.climatechangecentral.com/

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Home builder in Calgary that installs Geothermal systems - combined with solar water heat.

Interesting. Does anyone in Canada do grey water systems?

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Shazam

Interesting. Does anyone in Canada do grey water systems?

I think that company installs grey water systems too, at least partial (i.e. water coming from one of the showers, not both.)

My brother is taking possession of a new home from that company next month.

It has geothermal heat & heat storage, solar water heat, grey water heat recovery (partial), and will qualify for the $10,000 rebate from the Alberta government.

[Flames89]

http://www.waterfurnace.com/

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by Flames89

http://www.waterfurnace.com/

From that link:

Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 (H.R. 1424). H.R. 1424 offers a onetime tax credit of 30% of the total investment for homeowners who install residential ground loop or ground water geothermal heat pumps.

30% is nice tax credit. That's a pretty healthy tax incentive. No cap on systems installed from 2009 to 2016 either.

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

From that link:



30% is nice tax credit. That's a pretty healthy tax incentive. No cap on systems installed from 2009 to 2016 either.

Those are US tax credits.

[Nage Waza]

If you want solar panels, you can call ENMAX. I think they sell, install and do much of the work for you to get them running. The cells generate electricity, and you sell the excess back to the grid. They also sell other assorted types of generation, like solar water heating and wind. Give them a shout or try their website (I did not check) to see exactly what they offer. I think they actually charge you monthly for the installed equipment rather than a lump sum, but I could be wrong.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by cal_guy

Those are US tax credits.

Bummer. I guess it would help if I paid attention to where I am on the interweb. I should have realized it was too good to be true ... our gov's aren't that generous.

[photon]

As interesting as this stuff is, has anyone done studies of this stuff to see if it's actually a net benefit for the environment? Meaning the cost of manufacturing, disposing, maintaining, etc.

It just seems to me that having 100,000 little wind turbines stuck up around the city would be far less efficient than having 100 huge ones.

Same with solar, though really a roof is just wasted space once solar cells reach a good efficiency they should pay a home builder to install solar cells on their roof and maintain them. But rather than a bunch of solar cells, have a huge solar generator (the ones that focus sunlight to heat water).

So rather than having 10,000 generators that are only 50% efficient, have 100 generators that are 80% efficient (or whatever the #'s are).

Hm... I wonder if you could organize that for a small community. Get a few thousand people together, invest in a big wind generator, and use that to offset home consumption.

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by photon

As interesting as this stuff is, has anyone done studies of this stuff to see if it's actually a net benefit for the environment? Meaning the cost of manufacturing, disposing, maintaining, etc.

Sweet Jebus! Can of worms ....

Otherwise known as Life cycle analysis.

Can we say disposable versus cloth diapers?

[photon]

Heh.. but it's the kind of question that should be answered before going ahead with something like that.

Kind of like in Ontario during the fuel shortages when they asked everyone to turn off their lights to save energy, and it ended up using more fuel because big buildings turned off their lights (powered by hydro), meaning the buildings required more fuel heating to compensate for the lost heat from the lighting.

[algernon]

Originally Posted by Nage Waza

If you want solar panels, you can call ENMAX.

http://www.enmax.com/Energy/Res/Gree...chnologies.htm

Looks interesting.
I don't know I'd be wanting to pay an extra monthly fee, but, if they maintained the equipment AND I was able to sell power back to the grid (lowering my monthly costs) I would be looking into this. Kind of sounds like baby steps...which are probably the way to go with new technologies (unless you like the bleeding edge).

Thanks for the Topic, Ford. I will be keeping an eye on this thread.