 All right. Here we go. Thank you. We are excited to be, you know, here with you all today. This is the final of the three part series. As Nick mentioned, it's a partnership between may not upon and grow smartly. You all know the rules for zoom use the chat for chatting as we have been, and Nick will be monitoring the Q&A for a function. And we have a good amount of time set aside at the end after our two speakers to address your questions. Our goal with this series has been to raise awareness and to connect people who are concerned about and want to take action to address climate change. We began by reviewing the most recent legislative session with what outcomes were tied to Maine's climate action plan. And then we hosted a conversation on how to talk about climate action between the generations across generations, knowing that we all need to be engaged if we're going to succeed in this massive effort. Now, building on those two webinars. Today, we're focusing on meaningful actions that each of us can take to reduce energy usage, save money and help the planet. No pressure. We're going to be sharing resources on solar weatherization and electrification for your transportation and housing needs. And we have our two speakers today who will share ideas and answer your questions. First, we have Bridget Gifford, who's program manager at the Efficiency Maine Trust. She's been with Efficiency Maine for six years where her focus is on residential programs with a particular focus on low income initiatives. Bridget has worked in New York and Maine with legislative provider, excuse me, utility providers and state efficiency programs. She also has a graduating senior. This spring is pretty exciting and busy around her house. Thomas Tudor is branch manager and solar design specialist at Revision Energy. He grew up on a small island in Penobscot Bay, and after college and a bit of world travel, he returned to Maine, and he joined Revision Energy in 2015 as a solar and heat pump design specialist. Thomas is home and 1928 Cape is now net zero, requiring no fossil fuels so be setting a terrific example for all of us. And with that we're going to get to our speakers and begin with Bridget. Welcome. All right, well thank you everyone for having me and spending your lunchtime with me. I'm going to share my screen and go through some some slides that I have prepared. Okay. Can everyone see that. Thumbs up. Thanks, Thomas. So, as was mentioned, my focus at efficiency main is residential programs particularly low income initiatives so I just wanted to let everyone know efficiency main has rebates incentives for any commercial structures we've got you know sort of any facility type at all. And our interest is to make that as energy efficient as possible so I'm going to run through the residential offerings, we do have commercial offerings and special stuff for small businesses and schools and municipal buildings and so if that's your interest. At the end of the slide deck there is a 800 number that is our call center staffed in Brunswick, and they've got sort of everything at their fingertips, our websites are great resource to and I'll go through some of those tools here. But this is just going to be focused mostly on residential so I'm trying to advance the slide here we go. So what is efficiency main hopefully everyone on the call here is familiar with efficiency main but if not we're essentially a state agency, and we are in charge of all the states energy efficiency programs. Every state in the country has efficiency programs are typically run through the utilities main does it a little bit differently we're sort of a third party state program. And we find that that is the most efficient way to run things that you there's no conflict of interest there we're not selling electricity and yet trying to save electricity. We're just solely trying to save electricity. So, and so just a few built bullets about our work and our funding sources there's a lot of different budgets with different strings attached and so essentially if there's a budget through a natural gas utility that companies are invested toward natural gas savings so we do all that behind the scenes and hopefully deliver a much more elegant experience for the, for the customer. This is just sort of the problem statement you know why invest in energy efficiency this photo here just documents the stack effect and how cool air would enter the home and warm air is released through the home and I'm just sort of the flow of things and that's what we can do to tighten up the building envelope and then, you know, increase efficiency in the systems themselves. So, making our homes more comfortable and usable. So this is really what efficiency mean does we do four things we cut checks, you know we offer rebates. We offer financing for that delta what the project cost remaining to you would be. We've got tools on our website there's all sorts of calculators and tools that you can use to to understand what's going on in your home. And then we have a database of installers to do the work. And so we keep that up to date these are all the people throughout the state there's hundreds and hundreds of contractors and installers that do this work and you can find out who is closest to you and who's done this on our website so we'll get to that in a bit. We're going to first start off with rebates. And so efficiency mean essentially as I mentioned cuts checks to manors who are doing any kind of efficiency project so this is, you know, anyone doing an efficiency project it does not matter what your income is. You know, enhancements for low income, which I'll get to. But essentially, you will do your efficiency project you or your contractor will submit the claim form. And you'll get a check in the mail. A lot of times, if you've agreed upon the check going to your installer they'll just deduct that from your invoice but efficiency mean will somehow incentivize this project to get done through the check itself. So some efficiency measures where you don't need a registered installer to do that it's sort of a DIY you can do that yourself. And in those instances. There's an instant discount either right on the shelf if you're getting an LED it'll have a little tag there it says efficiency main or a water heater at Lowes or Home Depot. It's counted right there. And so the process is basically, you know, you always want to find an installer that's partnered with efficiency mean if you're doing a heat pump efficiency project you're doing any kind of insulation. You want to make sure that your contractors partnered with efficiency mean you can simply ask them, or you can go on to our website and choose from the installers listed there. If you want to appreciate that scope of work you want to complete the upgrade. There is a claim form that needs to be signed by both the installer and the homeowner, and that's it, and then you receive the check. And that is the process. It sometimes takes up to six weeks we usually try to get it to you sooner. So the rebates themselves, this is the meat and potatoes. Our all income insulation rebate is 50% of your project costs so half off efficiency means going to pay up to $5,000 so assuming your project is 10,000 efficiency means rebate to you is half of your project cost. If you're low income efficiency mean is going to pay 90% of that cost and a 10% copay from the customer. Here is just a financial example how that works and what is that payback. So if there is a $5600 project this is insulation and air sealing the rebate is 2500 and the air sealing rebate is 500. The cost to the homeowner is 2600 we have home energy loans available you can, you know, make that into small monthly bite size payments, but essentially that's going to be a six year payback on a project like that. Obviously if you're a low income household it's going to be a much shorter payback and a much smaller out of pocket cost to you. So this is what it means to be low income. So if you're a high-heap, which is heating assistance through main housing if your family gets any kind of lie heap assistance, or if your assessed value is below these county thresholds. You would be considered low income through the eyes of efficiency mean. We are just about to launch another eligibility criteria we've been partnering with the Department of Health and Human Services so very soon there will be a landing page on the efficiency main site to request eligibility for anyone receiving main care. And hopefully that's going to open up a whole lot of enhanced rebates to a whole lot more low income mayors. So the heat pump rebates this is by and large our most popular rebate. And so we've got rebates available $1200 for you know, sort of anyone, and then if you're low income at $2400. And here is that financial examples pretty self explanatory. Again, we've got the home energy loan. So your, your monthly payment on this example is about $40. What we don't have is your oil savings in this financial example but I will get to that in a moment on our website there's a calculator that clearly spells all of that out there's there's a lot of savings to be had if you're moving toward a heat pump. Okay heat pump water heaters this is one efficiency measure that we don't require a partnered contractor for installation you can do this yourself if you're handy you can pull up YouTube and and get to work. And these are great in basement spaces they dehumidify the space that they're in you can find these at Lowes and Home Depot or any kind of like plumbing distributor in the state. And I think I've got a financial example next this is just sort of an electric resistance inefficient up against a heat pump water heater they're both electrically powered. And then you can just sort of see in the end what you're out of pocket cost would be and you know year over year you're going to be saving a lot in electric energy annually. We also have rebates available if you're, you know, in the market for a washing machine as long as this energy star efficiency main asks that you save their estate, and you know, send that into us with the with the form, and we'll just catch a check for 50 bucks, as well as room air purifiers these are energy star has a highly efficient model and so we would rebate that for the energy savings there. And I do have all seen the LEDs on the shelves that efficiency main has sort of bought the price down right there at the point of purchase. If you're super interested in the stuff you can go on to our website and find like the cheapest place in Maine what store has the cheapest bulbs and then you can, you know, hopefully take your electric vehicle and drive there. Speaking of electric vehicles we have rebates on new battery electrics use battery electrics or plug in hybrids for any used EVs that is an option for low income mainers only. And on our website, there is a map of all of the infrastructure in Maine existing and future planned. So that's really handy I think there's a slide in a bit about that. This is just a slide about tax credits you know, sometimes it's helpful we get a lot of questions about the federal tax credit that has nothing to do with efficiency main but it's helpful to know what they are. So from April 15 and how you can really like capitalize on all of the great efficiency work that you've done at home. And so certainly check with your accountant some of these things are cumulative. Okay, the next category is financing as I mentioned, we do offer home energy loans so this is just a plug for that if you need assistance covering that copay portion of your efficiency project. This is a great option. So just a little bit about that there's more information on our website. This section here is just tools and resources so I mentioned our home efficiency calculators and other home heating calculators. This tool is going to give you just a real high level idea of whether or not your home needs insulation so you're going to plug in your square footage, and all of your, you know usage data, annually, and then it'll just give you a dial whether or not. You know you might want to have someone come out to your home and tell you what to do. So, in this scenario, this home uses about 42% more energy than, you know, a typically weatherized home of the same size. This one calculator just to get an idea of what's going on. This one is comparing home heating costs so for a typical main home over the course of a year, using these different primary fuels. These are the costs you can expect. This was taken using the governor's energy office, updated energy pricing on the 10th of May so this is fairly updated although I think. Costs have risen even since. But you can see, you know, propane and oil heat pumps is wildly efficient and cost effective. And so you can just sort of see where you are in this continuum. And then this is the same kind of tool just talking about water heating. So again, your electric resistance water heaters is far over to the right on this chart and your heat pump water heater is far over to the left. Both are electrically powered one is just highly efficient. And then you can just sort of see where your oil boiler and your propane boiler will land. We on our on our website have a vehicle cost calculator so this is just a handy tool as well. If you're thinking about an EV. I think the next slide here is also EV. Yeah, this is the infrastructure charging station locator that we've got. There are other tools that show, you know, what is the planned infrastructure for this year and next in the year after. On our website we have like these hubs. So if you have any kind of EV questions and Thomas will take it probably a lot further than I am but there's a there's a lot of information here about EVs and this is kind of your hub homepage on our website. So there's a heat pump hub page. This is like everything you need to know about heat pumps. And also installation. So these are like the three big things that we do it efficiency means so this is these three pages, you know, have all of the, the greater detail within it. The last thing I want to talk about is our installer database. These are the partnered contractors who do the, you know, heat pump installations and the weatherization. This is what the page looks like. You simply want to go over to this question here what service are you looking for and there's a drop down you want to plug in, you know, heat pumps for example, your zip code and then the distance from your zip code and it will populate who in your area has done the most rebated projects in that field. So, you know, they're all vetted and they've all, you know, we keep track of everyone's credentialing but you can just sort of see who's done the most rebates for efficiency mean who's the most active in this area, and give you kind of an idea of who you might want to go with. Again, you don't have to go here if you've got someone in mind and someone even word of mouth, you just want to ask that question to the installer are you partnered with efficiency mean before anything happens. And that's how you get the rebate you can't secure a rebate without a partnered contractor doing that work. And this is how you get started everything's on our website again and this is our call center number I mentioned in Brunswick 866-376-2463. You don't need to call me or anyone on staff, these guys are available and waiting to answer questions and if they can't they'll connect you to the right team if it's the residential team or the low income team or the commercial team or the EVs. They know how to handle your question. Hello, I just want to pass it over to Tom so we have enough time for questions at the end. I will stop sharing. All right, thank you, Bridget, and I will start sharing. And while I do, I just wanted to follow up on my last comment on the chat about electric on demand water heaters. The thing you need to be aware of, if you're considering those is your service capacity so you almost certainly need 200 amp service at your home if you're going to put in a on demand electric water heater, but we do some of them there are applications where they do make sense. So I think I'm sharing. Yeah, you are. Let me. All right. Awesome that was a bunch of good info Bridget appreciate you leading off. And yeah, like, I guess I've already been introduced I grew up on an island in Maine where self sufficiency was part of my childhood been helping main airs figure out their most practical options for kicking fossil fuel habits for about 10 years now. And you know we're in the really the world is in the process of transitioning from a fossil fuel powered civilization to lean energy, and it's exciting time and the vital transition is inevitable. But the faster we can accomplish it the more money we save and the better we leave the planet for future generations so hoping to go through some different. I like that graphs my background is economics I love graphs and visuals so hoping to get pretty deep into some things but also look forward to questions at the end and really glad that Bridget covered a bunch of the heating side of things so I'm mostly going to focus on solar. And just super briefly, you know, I feel really grateful to work for revision energy which is a hundred 350 co owners now and growing. We're really working to make this energy transition. Take advantage of the opportunity that it creates with democratizing our energy sources and alleviating economic and social injustice through that process. So it's a it's a big mission, but we got a lot of smart passionate people, and we always need more so we have a bunch of jobs posted on our website, and a bunch of different areas if you're interested I encourage you to check it out and also direct friends and college students and anyone you know there to see what's going on. So, as everybody here is probably already aware, you know really the key to tackling climate change is electrifying everything, you know there's approximately one billion fossil fuel machines in this country that need to be replaced with electric appliances that are cleaner quieter and require less maintenance. And then we can power them all with an electric grid that is increasingly run on wind and solar. So bringing it a little closer to home, you know, unfortunately, in New England we are the highest car emitters per capita in Maine. Mostly because you know we heat more than 60% of our homes with oil boilers although efficiency mains work has been really helping there and getting more and more heat pumps and more and more insulation to address our old housing stock. But you know we're a rural state, and yeah, we do use a lot of fossil fuels per person but that also represents a big opportunity for cost savings you know it's something to the tune of $5 million every year that flow out of the state in fossil fuel energy costs and you know that just hurts our local economy so the more that we can keep those in state. The more that that ripple effects outward into our local economy so just one sort of example one of these reports there's been many that find similar things, you know basically starting in 2050 with an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and you know how do we get out of there from here, and it's really a combination of energy efficiency, which efficiency main does excellent work in electricity decarbonization and fuel switching, you know basically that electrification that I was just talking about. So we don't have to tell everyone to go live off the grid like this and grow more of their own food, although that's definitely an opportunity for emissions reductions, but the reality is you know everyone does not have the opportunity or desire to live like this. We do all have the ability to compost, grow some of our food, eat as local as possible minimize plastic waste streams, choose cleaner and slower forms of transportation, walking biking trains. But electric vehicles are actually faster than their combustion counterparts, and we can touch on that a little bit more in the future so instead of homes looking like this, more and more are going to look like this. So this is the 100% solar household where solar electric system provides all the electricity needed to heat and cool the home, provide hot water, run the lights and appliances, even charge your car and battery for backup power when the grid goes down. The grid is still connected to the grid and earns credits for excess clean energy supplied to neighbors homes on sunny days and I'm going to get into the fundamentals of net metering a little bit more in a second. I'm going to grab briefly about my home, which is you know the version of this solar household, and really with just a few improvements, it now produces all the energy it uses annually so I've got 24 panels on the roof you can see I've got one heat pump on the first floor and one heat pump on the second floor, we've got a heat pump water heater in the basement. We've got rebates from all those some efficiency main they're great to work with heat rebate check and you know about a month depending on how busy they are. And I've done installation in the basement and air sealing and my next project is more installation in the attic, because those rebates for installation have gone up so there's more that I qualify for now. I have a charging electric vehicle at my house, so I'm actually not quite net zero anymore. So, got to improve the building envelope further. And this is just an example of my electricity usage for my all electric home, besides the wood stove, I actually do burn about a half quart of wood, which I love the heat pump wood stove combo but other than that it's all electric and you can see here's an example of a day. In April, where I was still you know you can see and the red on the left side of this graph is my home using energy from the grid overnight and that's running one of my heat pumps refrigerator, you know stuff that runs all the time. And then you can see about 6am the sun strikes my panels on my roof, and I start consuming my own solar energy directly so that's the blue is my solar self consumption. And you can see actually my usage grows down because my, my home is being heated by the sun and my heat pump sort of tails off and starts doing nothing. And then you can see all the green is excess that automatically flows back into the grid. And once it goes out through my meter. That's where I get credits on my bill to work off the red. So, that's what it looks like on a daily view. So here is, you know, an annual by month view of 2021. So you can see on the left side in January, you know I was using the my red bar is is higher than my green bar I was using more electricity than I produced that month. I was actually still working off the credits that I banked up the previous summer so you can see all those months from April to October. The green bar is higher than the red so I get a credit bank on my electric bill. And you know in November, the first month that I consume more than I produce I start working off that credit bank. So that's how the 12 month rolling credit system of net metering works and if you can produce the same number of kilowatt hours that you consume over 12 months, then you only pay the $14 per month minimum connection fee. So I was about 97% last year of energy that I consumed in my house I made myself on my own roof. So, I think that's helpful that metering sometimes seems complicated but it actually doesn't change anything and you just get a, you know, credits on your bill once a month. So to summarize, you know, solar is really simple straightforward new moving parts, sun hits the panels on the roof creates a flow of DC electricity that flows through a conduit usually it's three quarter inch conduit. It runs that power down to your inverter that's usually installed next to your electric panel, and you feed AC power out of your inverter in your electric panel that powers your home. And then electricity is really like water and follows the path of least resistance and once everything is satisfied in the home, then it is pushed back into the electric grid and powers your neighbors homes. So, there's a quick crash course in solar and net metering. I mentioned that I like economics so I put together different graphs and things and this is just an example of a recent solar project that was proposed on a pretty good roof. So here we can see utility rate today here in the middle. That's what CNP's rate is per kilowatt hour for the supply and transmission and delivery combined kilowatt hour charges, and about 21.1 cents. That's what went up about 33% in January. The long term trend for electric rates is that they increase more like 3% per year. So with that, you know you're going to be spending somewhere over 40 cents a kilowatt hour for that same electricity in 25 years. That's what the long term trend holds. Or here's the solar options, you know you could finance it and pay no money down and just take out a solar loan and trade your electric bill for a loan payment, and you're going to be about 13 cents per kilowatt hour including all the interest in financing charges or obviously if you have that money and don't need to take out a loan, you're paying less interest and you get even lower cost per kilowatt hour. So this is, I think it's important to try to think about solar as pre buying your electricity for the next 25 years. Because those panels have a 25 year power output warranty. So the manufacturer guarantees that each and every panel is still going to be producing at least 86% of its original output in its 25th year. So, pretty impressive for something that stays out there in the elements, all the time. I wanted to get a little bit more into solar design, because a lot of people think like that they need a perfectly true south house and just like perfect conditions for solar to make sense. So this is the best, you know, 180 degrees on a phone or 195 basically on a compass with the magnetic declination but anywhere in that range is really really really good. And, you know, you can go all the way to East or do West and still be within like 15 or 20% of optimal so this is my neighborhood, you can see we got a couple home solar as on Vermont app which is exciting. There are a lot of other homes here that have good solar roofs, you know, unless sort of the worst orientation for a house is like do East and do West. But even that, if there's no shade, you're still going to have a good solar investment opportunity so I made some just sort of red things here if I'm looking at a solid image and looking at roofs. You know, the ones that have shadows over the roof over the homes those are ones that maybe are not going to be the best option for rooftop solar without some tree removal, and just to, you know, give you some tools to think about out there. If you think about 100 foot tall tree, then you really need to be 200 feet away from that tree, you know the height of the roof, which is obviously above your head so, but that distance from the tree compared to the height of the tree above the roof. If it's three times as far away, then you're really going to have zero shade on that roof. If it's two times the height away, you're going to have minimal shade so something to think about if you are you know wondering about how to, you know, make your roof a little bit better for solar. You can go out there and check it out. If you have the ability to, you know, own those trees and control that shading. So, I think it's important to understand that many, many people in this country and around the world are financing solar projects these days, because, you know, it's, it's a really straightforward switch. Right now everybody pays per month for an electric bill. They're going to keep using electricity. In fact, we want everybody to start using more electricity because of all that benefits of electrification. And so, here's the orange box is, you know, a solar loan payment, let's say it's for 20 years. And that eliminates that bill that used to pay. That's the blue that is likely going to keep going up as long as you keep renting your electricity from the utility so you could even choose a 25 year solar loan to match the warranty of the panels. And most projects in Maine with 25 year solar loans have a monthly savings from the very beginning now, which is pretty remarkable that you can just change your current way that you're being built start paying off your own solar asset, and actually save a little bit of money in the beginning and then more overtime. The piece of solar that you know we don't include in any of our economic models is that it does add resale value to the home. And a solo report came out in 2019 that really found the nationwide average was about a 4.1% bump to resale value for having solar on the roof. Basically, you can save each you know money each year you're in the home and then recoup your investment if you decide to sell your home. So a lot of people ask about payback periods for solar and you know obviously the real estate market is nuanced by neighborhood and all kinds of other factors but in general, it does. The data shows now that once you get the tax credit back for your solar project, the rest of the cost has really been added to the resale value of their home. And then it makes sense because you got, you know, 35 plus year stream of electricity for that home, regardless of who's living in it. But not everybody has, you know, owned their own roof, or maybe that really shady roof and you know they got a beautiful old maple tree in the front yard in the southern direction that they don't want to take down. They tap it and you know make maple syrup out of it I get it. So, Community solar is a great option. It's a vision energy offers both types of community solar, which I think is important, you know, everybody's been getting these mailers about subscription community solar. And that's one way to go about it. It's not a bad way there's no like big catch there, except that it's unclear when those farms are going to get turned on. And, you know, it is important to understand how you're getting billed for those solar credits. But we also have a subscription offering for folks who don't have, you know, the ability to take out a loan or make a long term investment in a solar asset, you can still subscribe to solar and be contributing to clean energy development in our state. In that model you don't own anything there's another investor that builds owns and operates that farm, and you sort of like a middle man, and you get some of the savings for putting your electric bill to be connected to that farm. And depending on the offering that's usually between 10 or 15%. And it's typically pretty easy to, you know, subscribe or get out of those farms. The other is this shared ownership model, where you do actually own a portion of the undivided whole. You get the federal tax credit you get the incentives there's not another investor that's getting those part of the reason why we like it is those incentives stay in Maine. They're not greater long term savings. It is a separate asset from your home that can be sold or gifted or bequeathed. There are some operating costs on an annual basis that you have to pay your share of for being a part of that farm so the analogy is it's like a condo. Putting solar on your own property is like on your own house you do whatever you want. There's no condo fees. Shared ownership is more like a condo and then subscription is you know you're still renting you're just renting up more efficient home basically that uses a little bit less energy. So yeah just a visual of that, you know, you don't actually own like a certain number of panels in the farm you own a percentage of the whole, but it does make a lot of sense to think of it as like okay. How much power do I want to make at my house what's my electric bill says something that we help size these shares and figure out how many you need how many kilowatt hours you want to receive credits from on on your bill and then the process the bill is just the same as it does if you have solar on your roof, except you get this extra page at the end that shows you your share of the credits coming from the farm. So to break that down for with another graph where I hope you're not sick of these quite yet. This is, if you currently have $145 a month electric bill, and what are you gonna really budget for that over the next 25 years. You can see, you know, this is if utility rates don't increase at all anymore, then that should be your budget for electricity. If you sign up for a solar farm subscription, the 10% discount, then this is kind of the best you can hope for if rates don't go up. If they continue to go up as a long term trend suggests, then this would be your expected cost after that 10% subscription discount. And if you don't do anything, then you're going to be, you know, spending a closer 60 grand on power. And obviously, if you want to do panels on your own property, similar economics, but this is really, we know pretty precisely what the solar farm looks like, because we know what those panels are going to produce and what that system costs for you. So that's what it looks like if you take out a 15 year loan at 6.15% interest, and obviously it's less if you finance it yourself. So I feel like I'm going through these slides a little slower than I intended. So I'm going to speed up here a little bit. A lot of people wonder about if solar makes sense in Maine because of snow panels shed snow actually quite well. And I think it's important to put in perspective that here in coastal Maine, we do have a really good solar resource. It's slightly worse than Houston, Texas, but because we have cooler, crisper, clearer conditions, solar cells actually perform more efficiently. So the same system in Houston makes the same amount of power over the course of the year it does, it does in Portland, Maine. I'm going to sort of skip the long explanation here, but the big news is that we get tons of energy from the sun every year. And this is the total that our earth uses. And these are all the estimated total reserves we have of energy from our finite sources so even if you ignore all the other bad parts about burning fossil fuels we're still going to run out of them. And in fact, we never had any in Maine to begin with. So going to bring it back to the solar household. I'm really glad Bridget talked about heat pumps and water heaters. We talked about solar briefly talk about batteries and electric vehicles and try to wrap it up here so we've got time for questions. A lot of people are curious about batteries connected with solar these days. They do get the same tax credit as the solar project that they're tied to. It's important to understand that grid tied with battery backup is not the same as off grid. My uncle live off the grid in Liberty. And you know the reality is that you still need to burn quite a bit of something when you live off the grid whether that's wood or propane or both. You're not going to be heating with heat pumps you're not going to be charging electric vehicle when you live off the grid so really this is the better way that we need to be moving as a civilization and using that grid together and the battery can help both for your own resilience and in the future when the grid gets more sophisticated, you'll be incentivized for providing other services to the grid. So I'm going to sort of skip through these we got Bill and I the science guy here with his power walls and yeah there's a lot to learn about batteries but they the best way to think about them is an alternative to a generator. And they're clean quiet and come on in less than a second. Solar electric vehicle charging. I've got a Chevy bolt now at home that I love. It's roughly one third the cost per mile than a gas car, or you could, you know think about it by like putting eight panels up on your roof and that would really charge produce all the kilowatt hours to run that vehicle for about 12,000 miles each year. And I love Bridget showed that that growing network of DC fast chargers which I use and I know there's one I think going in Bangor. Belfast and Ellsworth that are really exciting for down East trips with electric vehicles. And just to sort of wrap it up, you know we're in the midst of this transition, and it sometimes feels like it's not happening fast enough. It is interesting to look at 1890 New York City in Manhattan all horses and buggies and literally only took 10 years for this tectonic shift in technology adoption and energy consumption. It's a decade the horse and buggy were entirely replaced by the first generation of internal combustion engines. So we're in the midst of this global transition, and it is possible and and will happen. Really just a matter of time. It's inspiring to know that US electric bus manufacturer pro Terra has already built the first generation of passenger buses that go about 350 miles on one charge and for these went into service in Portland this month. So I will leave it here with you know I like this idea of electrifying your home one machine at a time as today's victory garden. I think you can do to fight tyranny inflation and runaway emissions. And it also helps the pocketbook by reducing those monthly bills that you have, you make these investments in electric technology and then a way to power those electric devices and you really controlled your energy future. So, while you read Bob's quote I like to reflect these days on when kids will learn in history classes in the near future that we all used to live with tanks of toxic explosive substances around us all the time. So, oh, and don't just take it for me but rewind America.org there's a bunch of good info on there about how they're roughly 25 million jobs are going to be created in every zip code in the country through this transition. Thomas I got to jump in. I got to jump in so much info we got to make sure we have a few minutes left for questions and we got some already. First of all, thank you both so very much tons of awesome work happening exciting work. I want to get out there and just do it all right now on my house fix it all up. But let's take questions please if you have questions put them in the Q&A box down at the bottom, we will lose them in the chat. We asked the one from the chat first before I lose it from Steven does anyone know if the state of Maine is taking any actions to encourage community solar farms or I guess I'll expand that to other issues to farms contaminated with PFAS. The forever chemical that we have all heard about. Nancy this may be a question actually for you and I. I think that they are. We are working on legislation to sort of better site solar farms across the state, making sure that they are on places that, you know, have a minimal impact on the environment and wildlife and that are sort of in the best places that may include places contaminated with PFAS we're really sort of learning more and more every day about just how many places that that is. And so Nancy, as you as you're saying I think the ideal is that the solar goes on rooftops or brown fields. What I would look at is their dual use because agriculture and solar ideally, you could do both on some properties you know I wouldn't having been a farmer for almost 20 years I'm going to graze cows. Next to solar panels but certainly their places where she can go works exceptionally well, as long as some as well as some crops, and certainly when we're looking at the tragedy of PFAS in agricultural lands. There's a potential to at least recapture some value from the use of the land so that's a that's a wonderful point to make. And both may not have on and grow smart are active in the legislature will be looking to pursue that in the, in the next session and beyond. Great. All right, let's keep those questions coming. Did Thomas you. Okay. Question from Patricia, an opinion on demand water system. I'm not sure what that is. That's on demand heating of water rather than on demand water system. So heating water heating. Yeah I can jump in there so I mean, I think of water heating with electricity there's three types. There's standard electric tank. There's a heat pump water heater, which is sort of like a standard electric tank with a heat pump unit integrated in the top. There is an on demand electric water heater which is the most compact doesn't have a tank there's no standby losses, but you aren't getting any efficiency of the heat pump system so you're still putting in one of the electricity, getting one unit of heat into the water. So I posted a table in the chat of those different types of water heating systems and about how much energy they use depending on number of people in the household and on demand is slightly more efficient than a standard electric tank. But if you have space for a heat pump water heater. You do need about 800 cubic feet of air with a heat pump water heater for it to be absorbing heat out of. So that is the best way to go. But if you don't have that option then an on demand is worth considering if you have 200 amp service at your home. Thanks. And speaking of links, someone had asked for a link for officially mains vendor locator site. So I put that in the chat if there are other links from anyone here, please also put them in the chat that's helpful. Another question from Diane. Has anyone looked at the cooling rate of deciduous trees around the home in summer, and how that compares with reductions in solar so basically is your house cooler are using less energy to heat because of trees around. Yeah, I haven't seen any specific studies about that I'm remembering one about like, you know, if you paint large commercial rooftops white, then you get a little bit reduction in cooling demand but the, the thing with solar panels is, you know that upfront investment, the amount of clean energy that they can produce for you is really, you know, hinges on their solar access. So I do am confident that you know the economics there are would tell you to cut down the tree, if you were just looking at the numbers. From a foreign perspective, those solar panels are going to produce, you know, hundreds of trees worth, maybe even thousands over their lifetime of an array, as far as a carbon offset benefit so you know pure economics and carbon. It tells you to cut the tree down, though, you know, I get it that sometimes there are trees that should not be cut down. So, there are other options in those scenarios. Thank you. I had, I had solar evaluation at my house and I would have had to cut my one really on an L tree I cared about and I chose not to but that's why there's the solar farms so that you don't have to have it on the top to have the benefit. We have a question here from Steven for Bridget, any thoughts about rebates for EV chargers at private homes. Yeah, I'm sure there's been large discussions internally I'm not a part of at present that is not something that efficiency main offers. But you know again there's things change all the time and there's new funding streams and there's you know new problems we're trying to solve so at present, we don't have that but anything's possible. And a follow us a question here from Julia it involves question about bio gas and anaerobic digesters. But do you want to talk maybe generally about larger projects and some of your custom programs that you offer. So, on the outset, I was saying, you know, the slides that I was going over our residential we certainly offer commercial programs we have enhancements for small businesses. There are, you know, sort of special things for the restaurant industry or municipalities or schools, anything that doesn't fit nicely into one of our prescriptive programs. We have a custom track so if there's documented energy savings to be had. We just sort of shifted over to the custom program and they go through the nitty gritty details and so when there's anything sort of like innovative or out of the norm that we see every day. That team would take it. All right, thanks. There's a bucket there's there's a pathway for that. I have a technical question for Thomas here from Steven. Are there heat pumps that can be fitted into a FHF forced hot water boiler or forced hot air furnace instead of installing the multiple air air handlers that would be required in a typical old New England home with a lot of small rooms. Yeah, great question. The answer is sort of there are air to water heat pump units and revisions install of you I've worked on some designs for some that are, you know, big outdoor condenser that you see with the air source heat pump system but that is heating water that can then be used in a forced hot air distribution or sorry forced hot water distribution. I think if you want to sound smart, and the challenge there is that really you need a low temperature hydronic distribution, meaning like 120 degree water temp for radiant or low temperature distribution radiators that most homes don't have. So if your home uses high temp which most do that's in like the 160 degree plus, and there aren't very many good options for air to water heat pumps that can be a direct heart transplant for those types of systems. There are some technologies in Europe Mitsubishi makes one specifically that they've been telling us for years and years and years that they're going to get you listed and bring over to this country and it hasn't happened yet. So I'm not holding my breath on that I mean one approach that you can take is some well placed air to air heat pumps, and then an electric boiler that can be a direct heart transplant to sort of supplement with your existing hydronic distribution. The force hot air one is seems like it would be easier. But existing duct work is typically not compatible with these heat pump. These heat pump ducted systems. Low static pressure there's just different differences in duct design and engineering and again it's kind of where these new high efficient systems need to be like finally tuned, and it's really challenging to find an existing system that you can do a heart transplant for and have it work effectively. I'm just doing an innovation project to find a heat pump whole home solution and we're doing a lot of different configurations to find out best practices so we're trying to find a whole home solution and something that might be, you know, replicable throughout the state. So as a takeaway message it's stay tuned. Yeah, because more cool things are coming. It's time or a little bit over time. And thank you all so much. I'll turn it to Nancy now. Just thank you to Thomas to bridge it to all of you who attended today. This again is part of a three part series if you go to either may not upon or grow smart main, you'll be able to find recordings of all three of these webinars with I think a really good topics on what are we doing to impact climate change here in Maine. There's good things happening and more will continue as Nick said so we'll stay connected with all of you. So thanks again. Thanks everyone. Yeah, thank you.