 Welcome to the Portland Sustainability Series. My name is Jess Burton, and I am the director of this other main conservation collaborative. We are a non-profit organization based here in Portland, and our work is to provide direct services, technical and administrative, to conservation organizations, land and water conservation organizations based in Newark and Carmelin County. We have 19 organizations that we now work with, and the second arm of our mission is to support, facilitate, network between, and a conversation between all these organizations to think about what we can do more together. And part of that work is building strategic partnerships with other efforts and organizations out in the world because we know that a more woven community is a stronger community. And this is an example of one of our really amazing strategic partnerships with the Portland Public Library. This is the fifth in the series of the Sustainability Series. We've had a number of really creative and exciting presenters, and it's working for both of our organizations. We also have the Community Television Network here, and they are filming our events and putting them on our webpage and on YouTube so people can watch the event at any other time. Next month we'll be having a presentation called Journey into Climate by a professor from Orno named Paul Meowsky. He's a really world-renowned scientist who studies and speaks on the effects of climate change. And then we're scheduling new speakers out for, we plan to have this series run for the rest of the year, the fourth Wednesday of every month. And this month we are thrilled to welcome Revision Energy, and Nick is here. Sorry. So Nick Samson is a Mainer. He grew up in Maine on the coast of southern Maine and has, he spent a lot of time outdoors with his family all over the state. He is a relationship manager for Revision Energy and works with local schools, towns, and other nonprofit organizations to help them save on their energy expenses and carbon emissions through solar energy and advantages financing partnerships. So I am thrilled to be here to welcome you and introduce you, and now I look forward to your talk. Thank you. And thank you all for coming. Thanks Jess for the introduction and for having us here for the sustainability series. And thank you to everyone who joined. So as Jess mentioned, my name is Nick Samson, and tonight I'll be presenting on solar energy systems and some of the other high efficiency systems that Revision installs. And specifically I'll be talking about how those can save you money on your energy bills while at the same time reducing your reliance on fossil fuels and your carbon emissions. So just to start, I'll briefly introduce Revision Energy. So we're what's called a turnkey solar energy contracting company which means that we handle every step of the installation process. Our work is carried out by our in-house teams of engineers, designers, and installers. We were started in 2003 up in Liberty, Maine. Here's a little map of our shops. We opened up in Portland in 2006 and as you can see we now operate a total of five shops. Since 2003 we've installed more than 5,000 systems. We're quickly approaching 6,000 in Northern New England which we're really excited about. Something else just to go back briefly that we're also very excited about. As of 2015 we earned a B Corp or Benefit Corporation certification. Basically this is a certification awarded to businesses that proactively focus on positive social and environmental change. A couple recognizable B Corps include Patagonia and Ben and Jerry's. And so we are a mission driven company and our mission is to accelerate the transition away from a fossil fuel based economy to a clean energy economy in Northern New England. And so just to touch on briefly Maine has the highest per capita fossil fuel consumption as well as carbon emissions. We export five billion dollars annually to import fossil fuels. We use roughly 1.5 billion gallons of fuel just for transportation and heating in the state. And as many of you may have heard roughly almost exactly a week ago NASA and NOAA announced that 2016 was the hottest year on record. So 17, the last 17, 17 of the hottest years on record have occurred since 2000 or 16 of those 17 years have occurred since 2000. So while temperatures are rising one thing that's very exciting for the solar industry is the cost of solar energy has been decreasing. So over the past 10 years the cost of solar has dropped by more than 75 percent and this has led to a significant increase in its popularity which we find very exciting. Just to give you an idea of the solar resource that's available to the world, this picture shows in the yellow circle the annual solar energy resource that's available globally. Coal and gas the two circles representing coal and gas are for their total energy resource that's available. So while it's great that that the cost of solar has come down so much and there's such a great resource of it available globally, a lot of people still especially during this time of the year during the winter still wonder if solar is a viable energy source here in Maine and Northern New England. So we might not receive the sunlight that the French Riviera does but we're actually on the same latitude as a lot of areas on the Mediterranean. We receive more solar energy than Germany does, Germany is located underneath that French Riviera tag. We receive roughly 33 percent more sunlight than Germany does on an annual basis and why that's important is because Germany's been leading the world in solar energy systems installed per capita to date. So we see that as a great example of what a good resource we have here in the area. Just to quickly note, I mentioned Germany last year. They achieved or supplied nearly 100 percent of the whole country's power demand. My understanding is it was a summer day and it was pretty windy in the north part where there are a lot of wind turbines and pretty sunny in the southern part of the country. And so one final thing to show in regards to the solar resource that we have available to us in Northern New England is the study that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently came out with. So they looked at each state's total electricity consumption and how much of that electricity consumption could be offset with just rooftop solar. The dark states represent a high score, so a high portion of each state could a high portion of each state's electricity consumption could be offset with rooftop solar. The lighter scored a little lower on the scale. As you can see, Maine and Northern New England scored very well with the report finding that Maine could offset more than 55 percent of our total electricity consumption with just rooftop solar. So if a homeowner is interested in looking into a solar energy system with revision energy, the first step involves usually an initial evaluation of that site. And usually it's just on Google Earth software, so it's usually very, very quick and simple. We take a look at a homeowner's address and what we're looking for is, this is a street actually located in Brunswick. What we're usually looking for is some of the homes. You can see those sunny rooftops there that are located on the northern part of the street. So they have good solar exposure, good orientation. If you look closely, you can actually see that a couple of these homes have solar energy systems on them already. A couple of them and one further down the street. And so those those rooftops are great for solar and that's what we're looking for when we look on Google Earth. If we see a roof that has kind of that red tree, I don't know if you can notice this red tree right here right in front, that might not be as good for an on-site solar application. But usually we'll just try to get a general look before coming out to the house so we have an understanding of what the roof looks like and what the potential is before we're on-site. And so once we're on-site, we'll do a couple of things for the what we call the site visit. So we'll first look at a homeowner's electric bill and we'll basically total the electric bill to see over the past 12 months to see how much the homeowner is using for electricity annually. When we design a system, we'll try to offset the majority of that electricity consumption without exceeding it. We will also look using the electric bill at what you're spending on your electricity and that gives us an idea of what the savings opportunity is and what the payback period is for a system. The other thing that we'll do during a site visit is we'll evaluate the site basically. We'll look at your electrical system and your rooftop and when we look at the rooftop, we're measuring it but we're also doing a shading analysis on the roof and that is included. A picture of that shading analysis is included at the top of this slide here. Basically what we do is we take with a fisheye lens, we take a picture of the horizon from the perspective of your roof and that the software that we have tracks out the path of the sun over basically over the time of the day and the time of the year. I don't know if everybody can see it but basically the x-axis is time of the day and y-axis is time of the year. Yellow represents when you'll have sun on your roof or on your array and green represents when it might be in the shade because of it looks like a few trees up there. This gives us a and a solar resource value or a solar exposure value and we use that to put a generation estimate together for your system. So that helps us really fine tune our our proposal and get an idea of really what type of system you can have on your roof. So once a homeowner or a business owner installs solar, the system obviously involves the solar panels that go up on the rooftop or as I'll show a little later on could be a ground mount application but so you have the solar panels and then the other major system component is the inverter system and basically how the system works is when the sun's shining the array is producing direct current electricity and that direct current electricity is fed down into what's called the inverter system or the inverter. The inverter converts that DC electricity to alternating current electricity or AC electricity. That's then compatible with the home and with the grid and so when the sun's shining it's first going to feed electricity into your home it's going to feed onsite demand. If generation exceeds onsite demand you're going to send the additional electricity that you're producing out to the grid and through a program that's called net metering which I'll explain in the next slide. You're basically or a slider too you're basically building up credits with the utility so you get a kilowatt hour credit for every solar kilowatt hour that you send out to the grid so then during times of the year when you are using more electricity than you are producing those credits are going to go towards basically buying down or offsetting your bill. So just to briefly cover the economics of a residential solar energy system a standard system might installation might cost anywhere from ten to thirty thousand dollars. I know that's a wide range but it depends on what you're using for electricity and what your roof space looks like how much space you have available for a system. Currently there's a 30 percent federal tax credit that's available for solar energy systems so that's a dollar for dollar reduction in your tax liability the year that you have that system installed and through the net metering program that I just mentioned you receive full retail value for all solar electricity that you send out to the grid so all solar electricity that you produce and generally we find that a residential system here in Maine is going to have a payback period of anywhere from eight to fifteen years just depending on the the cost that you're paying for electricity the orientation of the roof production of the system all of those all of those variables so feel free to ask questions as I go. So one thing that or a couple of things that makes solar so cost effective is how long the panels will last as well as how simple the systems are so the National Renewable Energy Laboratory the same laboratory that collected that study on on the the potential for rooftop solar in each state collected studies on existing systems that were installed in the 1970s and 1980s many of which were over in Europe some of which were in the local New England area but what they found is that those systems are still effectively producing 70 to 80 percent of their maximum power output currently and I just read about a school actually in Massachusetts that I believe is 30 years old and it's still producing 90 percent of its expected power output 30 years after it was installed so they have the panels have a lifetime expectancy of 40 years which is great and because the systems are so simple there's really low if any operating and maintenance costs so there's no moving parts and very simple systems very very easy to maintain so essentially what you're doing when you're investing in a solar energy system is you're locking in a supply of electricity for for roughly 40 years or for the lifetime of that system however long you have it around and and this allows you to do that at a very low cost per kilowatt hour so if you were to take the all in costs of that system or however much it costs to to buy that system and divide that by how much electricity it generates over its lifespan it results in a really low cost per kilowatt hour usually it's roughly for residential systems anywhere from from nine to maybe 11 cents a kilowatt hour and the current rate is 13 cents a kilowatt hour for businesses there are some additional tax incentives that are available so that could be even lower at anywhere from maybe six to eight cents a kilowatt hour so not only are you locking in that supply of electricity for a low cost per kilowatt hour but you are protecting yourself against the variability of utility rates in the in the future the energy information administration performs an annual energy outlook and their past couple of annual outlooks have found that they expect energy rates to increase by roughly 2.5 percent a year on average over the next 20 years just to give me an idea so one final benefit of solar is that it actually studies have shown that will add value to your home and actually speed up the payback or speed up the sale of the home so this is a study that came out of Berkeley California and a few other studies have been done like this before 2015 but when this came out in 2015 it was fairly significant because it looked at several states across the US rather than just individual states and most of them had focused on California but what this found is that on average a solar energy system is going to increase the resale value of a home by roughly $15,000 if you look at the basically the cost that it the installation cost to put the system up versus the increase in the resale value it usually comes out the same if not that the resale value is a little bit higher than what that installation or the difference in resale value is a little higher than what that installation cost was which we find very encouraging yeah maybe getting to this but what's the weight rating for top insulation yeah great question so what when we install a system we're basically we're installing it to meet the the wind load of the area so in Portland it might be 90 miles an hour if if we're up on a hill somewhere that's windier it might be 100 to 110 miles an hour possibly so we'll basically we'll design the system to meet to meet that wind load that peak wind load we'll do the same for snow load as well so I assume like in that picture ideally you have a south facing roof let's say that roof is facing southwest when you angle those panel sets that that's a great question so actually I might hop back a few slides here so when let's see a ways back but when so when costs were when solar costs were up here we probably would if you had say you had a western orientation or you had yeah we probably would have pitched the panels we would have put them on a racking system to orient them more do-self and give them optimal pitch so say you have a low pitch roof you know you might increase the pitch of that to 35 degrees which is optimal in in Maine and New Hampshire but since the costs of solar panels have come down so much so now that we're down here actually the cost to add a few panels to make up for the loss of production or the lower production that you have on a west facing roof or a shallow pitch roof is less than the cost of adding that racking system to the to the array so we're actually finding that we'll install systems on east and west facing roofs that are really shallow pitch and those are still very cost effective systems so those whether it's a business or a homeowner or an institution that installs those they receive solar energy in the morning when it's on this east facing roof and and good production in the in the afternoon and evening when it's when it's hitting that west facing roof that's a great question yeah can you speak a little bit about roofing materials and replacing the roof and what are the details on the solar panel side effects yeah absolutely that's a great question so let's get back to this picture here so this is an installation on an asphalt roof that's what we do most most commonly but we'll really install on any type of roof slate might be one of the exceptions I think we've done one slate roof before but it was it was it was pretty complicated and costly but so so we'll install a lot on asphalt roofs and they generally have an expected lifespan of 25 years so if they have less than there than half of their expected lifespan left we will generally recommend that the homeowner or business owner replace that roof before they install a system if you basically if you get to a point where you're you know you're say you're 20 years into a system and the roof needs to be replaced you would have a solar contractor come out to the home remove the the array have the roof replaced and then and then put the array back up on the roof if you what's really common to do if you're replacing your roof and installing solar or building new construction installing solar is to standing seam metal so that has a longer lifespan of maybe 50 or more 50 to 60 years so usually if you throw solar on that you're you're pretty much set so standing seam will attach actually right to the standing seams we'll attach those seams we have seam clamps basically that attach right on and it minimizes the roof penetrations for those systems good question Is it ever what is an advantage is not to have the array on the roof you're saying you don't know if you feel left your house or yeah great question so um let's see so if you're I might be able to find one um just on this google earth image but if you're you know if you have a lot of shade on the roof um or you have you know say you don't have that you might not have the space on the roof so if you have a lot of small dormers like window dormers or a lot of piping on the roof that breaks up the roof it makes it hard for the installation but you have good ground space um it could be it could be a great application for a ground mounted system and it all depends on on what your goals are as a homeowner or business owner so if you don't want to use your roof space then a ground mount would be a great application if you if you only want on the roof and you don't want to use up your ground space then then certainly try to make the roof work um so that's part of the site evaluation process as well is trying to just get an understanding of what the goals are for the system and actually so that's that's perfect timing so i'll just go through just a few examples of some of the the systems that we'll install so this is just a rooftop system um this is in portland main and we can actually orient the panels a couple of different ways well two different ways but this is what's called landscape so you can see that they're horizontal on the roof um and basically whoever did that site evaluation found that that was the best fit for that roof so we could maximize that roof space with um panels in landscape this is a an example of a ground mount system um this was up the coast i believe and so probably didn't have a great rooftop or want a great field space and so they had this this system installed nice nice and close to their home which always help is helpful for the insulation cost so it means a lot a shorter power run to the home and can keep helps keep the cost of the insulation down this is another ground mount system just to give you an example and this is a dual axis tracker that will sometimes install um so this system tracks the sun um on both axes throughout the the day basically so it's it's um it's maximizing solar production so we find that in this area depending on the solar exposure of a of a site this system could increase production by 20 to 30 percent of um of standard production basically and you know ideal ideal applications for this system are maybe less ground space um but not a good good roof space there we install all earth trackers they're called all sun trackers manufactured by all earth based out of vermont so these are certainly built for this northern new england climate these these systems will actually when the snow is falling they'll they'll tilt to the north and track to the north at night to dump the snow off to the north side so it's it builds up out away from its track during the day um they'll also lay flat if the if the wind exceeds 30 to 35 miles an hour um basically to to reduce wear and tear on the system and I believe these are rated for 120 mile an hour winds so pretty cool systems so if you don't have a great roof um rooftop site or you don't have a great ground site um homeowners and business business owners can actually now still invest in solar um offsite so we revision energy in 2015 started working with community solar farms um and basically what these but these involve is a homeowner or business owner buying a certain number of panels at this ground mounted system um and basically you get you build up a credit when the sun's shining on your electric bill um depending on how much electricity your panels are producing throughout the day um so in a community solar farm you can have up to nine members in Maine um and it's it's just like a solar array on your home where you own the panels you own the the portion of the system components of that array um that you bought and it goes to offsetting your bill um so we were we're pretty excited to be able to offer offer solar to really really anyone that that is interested in investing in it yeah where are the examples of that yeah great great question so this one is oh and sorry this is an in progress photo of one that we just installed at uh Crystal Springs farm in Brunswick Maine um this one so as you can see this one can be seen right from the road um we installed one of our first ones was installed um at the main idle motor court in Freeport so if you're headed up to Brunswick and between exit 24 and exit 28 if you look to your right there as you're headed north there's a solar array in that field across the across the way there so that's a community solar farm over there we've installed another in Wayne um I believe one in Wisconsin um and I know we're at I think we're at six or seven now so there are a couple more that I'm I'm forgetting so so as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation a lot of um mains fossil fuel consumption can be attributed to heating and transportation so um revision energy installs um hyper efficient air source heat pumps um and we believe that by pairing um the solar with these air source heat pumps which heat and cool homes um you have the opportunity to basically go after your fossil fuel consumption in instead of or in addition to offsetting just the plug load of your home or appliances of your home so um air source heat pumps have you all seen air source heat pumps before um seen like outdoor units and and maybe an indoor unit so basically the outdoor unit is what's called a compressor um in this picture it's right it's located right here on the outside of the home um and that runs a refrigerant line set to the indoor unit which is located inside the home and basically the way these systems work is just like your refrigerator but in reverse during the winter season so they have um as I mentioned a refrigerant that um collects latent heat even at low temperatures during the winter time um and they transfer that heat from the outside outside of your home into your um indoor unit which then distributes its throughout maybe a space of a thousand square feet of 1500 square feet depending on the size of the unit um and so since they're transferring heat versus creating it with electricity they're incredibly efficient air source heat pumps are about 2.5 to 3 times as efficient as standard heating methods um and so because they are that efficient they're using less electricity and therefore they're they're it's easier to offset that electricity with solar so it's a great way to um offset your fossil fuel consumption or your oil consumption um with with solar energy anybody have questions about yeah um the indoor unit to recommend the ones I've seen pretty high yeah so we actually yeah we have a couple of options um just based on the specs the the more efficient option is going to typically going to be the the wall mounted unit that goes up higher um generally depending on the layout of the the space it also might do a better job of distributing that heat however we install we're installing more and more of the four mounted units so that's certainly an option as well and they're you know they have the same ratings there are several different options for what they can produce per BT uh for BTUs per per hour um so floor mounted is is certainly a great option what's the right way to run between the exterior or interior or isn't that ah sorry the run between the exterior unit and the interior unit yes um so shorter is certainly is certainly better once you I think once you it depends on the unit so there you could do you could do what are called mini splits where you do one to one unit so you have one outdoor unit to one indoor unit and I think once you exceed 25 feet or 30 feet you start to lose some of the efficiency I believe um and then you have multi splits which you could have one outdoor unit to up to I think up to uh up to four I'll say maybe there might be some that can go up to eight I mean yeah I think up to eight um off of one outdoor unit and those I believe have a little longer um it can go a little longer distance generally you can go you can go pretty far you could you can pretty much yeah short if you can do a shorter shorter line set that's great um but usually we're not in a situation where we can't access a room from a certain outdoor location with residential applications so I can certainly do it I think it goes you know it can go up to 100 feet or so so I'd have to I'd have to look at the specs to to tell you exactly but um what okay so that you know it's basically being outdoor air and putting it inside creating a positive pressure in the house um that's a great question as well I don't believe that there are any there's any problems with with pressure uh oh sorry it's it's actually it's it's taking heat from outside it's not taking air from outside so basically all that it's doing is it's circulating air um in the home and it's basically it's filtering that air as it's circulating it but it's basically transferring heat through that refrigerant which is a closed loop system so quick question yeah do you guys do any underground like the geos we don't so we we stick with we stick with the air source heat pumps um not that not that geo isn't a isn't a good um good source of heat it's it's heat pumps are roughly 300 efficient whereas geothermal is my understanding is like 400 efficient but just requires um I think a different skill set and and a little bit more um intensive for for the insulation practice so yeah um but we find that air source heat pumps are so g i my understanding is geothermal can be great for really large homes if you're trying to basically heat uh a big space and you where you would otherwise have really high oil bills um air source heat pumps are great for retrofits so if you just want to reduce your oil consumption um and keep that that you know say you have an oil system that that boiler in place you can you know install one heat pump for say maybe anywhere from maybe say five four thousand forty five hundred dollars um and you can install it in a place that you use most often in the home for basically the greatest savings opportunity um and you can and you can get most your heat from that system they're also great for for smaller homes as well yeah um so I have a home on Keith Island yeah it's called the heat pump very nice but I mostly live and work one and so I experimented a little bit I bought a turn of heat pump off and having my oil thermostat set to 50 yeah but the last time I left I set my oil at 48 and set my heat pump at that minimum heat setting yeah and then I have a neighbor who comes by regularly just check on the house and she said the inside temperature was pretty much always like 60 oh okay so but in any case I guess my close report questions is it okay to just leave the heat pump running all the time when we're down and just leave the oil set below just kind of back up is that a good strategy absolutely yeah that's that's that's actually the perfect way to do it no matter no matter how you're using the home um so heat pumps run most efficiently when you just set the temperature and forget it so they eat a lot of people like to turn you know turn your your oil down or your your thermostat down at night and then back up in the morning but heat pumps actually are extremely efficient because they are good at basically maintaining that temperature and using very little energy while they maintain that set temperature um if you if you turn them down and then and then ramp them back up they're going to be less efficient so studies have shown that that's the best way to use them it's just set the temperature and let it be and we that's that's exactly how we recommend to do it if you're basically heat pumps will work down to their the Mitsubishi's that we install are guaranteed to work down to minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit they maintain a hundred percent of their rated heating capacity down to five degrees Fahrenheit um and so but if you get to really it's just some really cold temperatures below you know minus 13 degrees they might they might turn off um to protect the system so that's exactly what we recommend is set the temperature and then have your backup heat source on set a few degrees below what the what the heat pump set temperature is so it's a great way to do it have you have you had uh have you seen been able to see look at your bill since since setting it that way to see how it's going it's just been for like two weeks or something so we'll check the bill in Paris last year yeah so I have another question um which is because we're not up here very much our current electric bills are not going to reflect what it'll be like what we do look at full time so um I anticipate that we're using heat pumps as our primary source for heat and possibly install another unit because it's a you know make sure the whole house gets heated um and we're up here all the time I guess it's it'll be if we have some of the biggest groove so I know I can talk to you individually but it's just can you do an assessment even though our bills will not show what it'll be like because we don't live here yeah absolutely so um with heat with heat pumps specifically we can look at uh what the general insulation value is of the home what the envelope looks like what space what amount of space it will be heating and we can basically calculate we can come up with an estimate for what those systems will be using for electricity annually um in addition to that if we're working with a a new construction project for a homeowner um or or there or that somebody's moving into a new home one times we'll look at the existing electric bill um at that at the home that they're moving out of and we'll try to make adjustments based on what appliances are in in the existing home and what ones will be in the new home so something we can we can certainly work on so absolutely it's a great question yeah how many on average uh panels would you need to run on the split oh great question um it depends on at what what type of mini split but I could generally say probably um I would say anywhere from maybe eight to ten panels would be my maybe six to ten sorry for widening that range on you but um yeah and we generally find that you know a mini split might it depends on on a lot of things like what the production is of the of the array where it's installed um what the what the habits are for heating in the home but and what you're what you're setting the temperature to what time of the year it is but generally they the heat pumps might use um anywhere from maybe two thousand to four thousand kilowatt hours a year um really really roughly um and so a anywhere from I'd say yeah anywhere from six to ten panels or so um would be able to cover the majority of that so yeah so um generally if you have the right application for it um generally the increased production um could offset the additional the the higher costs of that system um the because it because it is a more a more complex system or there are some moving parts it does have a higher install cost as you as you guess so um it could be you know just roughly that system a tracker system could be roughly anywhere from I'd say 32 to 40 thousand dollars there are a couple of different options but you could have a 20 panel uh tracker or 24 panel tracker and then you have different options on what you're what you're throwing on it for panels so you could throw standard efficiency panels on it or you could put high efficiency panels on it which would affect the cost of the system but maybe 32 to 40 thousand dollars so we will install um we'll install the panels to basically to to meet the snow load of the of the area so usually it's going to be three feet off the ground yeah yeah um so we recommend um just letting the the the snow be on the panels and letting it slide actually it's a it's a really common question especially after I think 2002 winters ago whenever we had all that snow um so so usually what we recommend is is just let the panels be let them shed the snow naturally um so the the panels are made of tempered glass they're going to shed snow um similarly to a metal roof versus an asphalt roof so um what I've heard is that they might go a little slower than a metal roof so if you have high enough pitch um so say anywhere from 32 degrees to 45 degrees it's probably going to shed that snow fairly routinely if it's a shallower pitch roof um we still would recommend just just leaving it um if you want to be proactive about it we I've heard of people putting basically um like up uh something that's protective on that roof rake to to basically make sure they're not going to damage the panels and you can you can either rake the bottom of the panels or sometimes you can just roof rake the snow that builds up on the roof space below the bottom of the panel in the drip edge of the roof just to clear that out so that the snow can shed um what we do when we put together our performance estimate for each system is we factor in our engineers are are looking at data um from existing systems on on how the generation is affected by snow in the winter time so we factor in um some loss of production due to snow based on your your array's pitch and orientation so great question um so this is a another appliance that we will install it's a heat pump water heater so this uses the same technology as an air source heat pump um but basically it's that compressor um which is outside for the air source heat pump is inside and on top of the tank for the heat pump water heater um you can actually if you can see that great on the top of that that tank there that's the compressor um and so basically by usually this will we like to install this type of system in a nice large basement space um um if you have a thousand square feet or more in a in a basement um that stays relatively warm it can be a really great application so this system transfers heat from that basement into the tank and uses that heat to heat up the water in the tank in doing so it uses about a third of the electricity of a standard electric tank um additionally this is a nice benefit it can dehum it dehumidifies the basement as well so that can be nice in the summertime um if uh if things are getting um fairly humid down in the basement space so um these also just like air source heat pumps because they're using less electricity and so are so efficient are easier to offset with solar so you can not only um use solar for for the energy required to heat your home but you can use solar for the energy required to to heat your water um so this is a this is a new construction home so what's i mean what's the size of the tank typically yeah great question so we install two options for this is the stebel elton heat pump water heater we install a 58 gallon um stebel elton and we uh accelera and then we install an 80 gallon stebel elton accelera so yeah do you think that would be installed in the basement in a their raised format like say four feet off the basement floor so the tank they have the tank sit four feet off the basement floor that is something i would ask um one of our master plumbers i'm not entirely sure um i know that sometimes we'll elevate it maybe six inches with like uh i think we have a platform that we will put underneath it i don't know if we've ever done four feet that's also a great question that i would have to i would have to double check on yeah we probably we probably ideally wouldn't be putting it somewhere where that floods often but so we would look at options for like you mentioned trying to elevate it if we need to what's the height of the basement if you don't mind me asking it's be yeah so it depends on the size of the tank too so if you're if you're these tanks are fairly tall and require a little bit of space in between the top and and the top of the ceiling just to circulate air so might be a little challenging to mount at four feet off the ground but something we could certainly discuss and look at and talk to you about how often it floods and and try to oh oh yeah i'm sure we'll be fine with that yeah yeah that's true that's true um so yeah that that'd be something we would just look at um and probably talk to talk to maybe a master one of our master plumbers or or thermal operations manager um so this is a new construction home that was that was built in jackson new hampshire and as you can see it has a nice 24 panel solar array on top and it also heats the home entirely with one air source heat pump um and has an electric water heater so this home is offsetting 100% of not only its electricity consumption but its entire energy consumption with just solar and so that's achieved through as i mentioned those really efficient um appliances that are heating the home and as well as the water but also a really tight envelope a really well insulated building um i find this really encouraging for for northern new england um just because of the climate that we have that you can that you can fully power your home with with a an array on your rooftop this is also corrugated metal if anybody's interested in in roofing material but this is a corrugated metal system yeah um we on top of sips panels with with roofing material on top of the sips panels that's a good question i would i'd have to look into that we might we do have options for if it's a really difficult um if it's a if it's a different um roof structure we do have options we have feet that attach to most of those roof structures um it just might make the installation a little more complicated um but but certainly something we can look into yeah so i'm going to add additional panels and i know we're very good at that to have a complete system like this with heat pumps and the hot water table yeah a good question they so this is i think this is a seven roughly seven kilowatt system um i looked at their um their electric bill they maybe i'd say maybe maybe add three or four kilowatts to to do the heating and cooling and hot water of the home that's a really rough estimate i think they had actually figured out exactly what they would need um before we got out there for the site visit but depends on the space of the space of the home but yeah i'd say you could this has one heat pump and electric hot water say three to four kilowatts which is is basically the panels that we install can be anywhere from 280 watts to 320 watts right now so a three kilowatt system or 3.2 kilowatt kilowatt system would be 10 of our our high efficiency panels um and a 3.6 kilowatt system would be um sorry not a 3.6 i was thinking 5.6 but a 2.8 kilowatt system would be 10 of our our standard efficiency panels just to give you an idea um so not only are people in main and New Hampshire pairing solar with hot water um appliances and heating and cooling appliances but they're starting to pair them with their electric vehicles um so which is which is very exciting and so um electric vehicles offer driving for really really cost effectively for roughly four cents per mile versus 15 cents per mile with a traditional um gas powered sedan basically so we find that you know generally nine solar panels with kind of standard installation can power basically a Nissan Leaf to drive about 10,000 miles um each year so nine solar panels for 10,000 miles um a common electric vehicle charging station that you can install for your home would be a level two charging station which can can power most electric vehicles like a Nissan Leaf in um fully power in about eight hours or so um and those might cost anywhere from 1500 to $2,000 for an electric vehicle charging station. Any questions on that? Yeah so you're so basically in that situation you are you've built up credits to to during the during the daytime with your solar array and when you're using the electricity during the nighttime to to power the the electric vehicle those credits are then being applied to your bill so there's some really exciting technology that um I don't know enough about but I've I've heard a little bit about is is called vehicle to home um basically cars and and charging stations where you can take the the stored electricity that you have in your in your electric vehicle that you supplied with solar and you can use that to run your home um at night basically so you can take advantage of when the sun's shining you can power your you can charge up your car um and then if you haven't used up all the charge in your car while you've been driving around you can then um you can then send that solar electricity back to the home from your vehicle that's still I believe a little ways out but um certainly encouraging to see see the type of technology that's that's out there uh this is an installation we recently did at um University of New England this is at their bus stop but as you can see nine panels there and we have two um on both sides of those windows there we have two Clipper Creek level two um EV charging stations and so I'm just going to take you through a few of the systems that that we've installed in the last couple of years this is this was installed in Hiram main this is an 80 kilowatt ground mount system have you all heard of grandiotes um they do they do granola uh homemade granola um oatmeal a main base company and they moved into a new facility in 2015 and um at that new facility they installed this 80 kilowatt kilowatt solar array a ground mounted system which was designed to offset um I believe a hundred percent of their electricity consumption this was also the system was also installed in 2015 this is a ground mounted system that was installed on it's the first solar array to be installed on a capped landfill in Maine um Massachusetts is is uh is I believe leading the way for for installing solar on capped landfills um but it's a we're really excited about this opportunity to basically develop unusable landfills landfills and brownfields with clean renewable energy um just to just to point out if anybody's curious about what these big blocks are down here so the uh capped landfill can't be we can't penetrate into the into that capped landfill obviously so a standard ground mount we would drive piles or what I call ground screws maybe seven feet into the ground to to create that basically that structure that holds the ground mount in place since we can't do that with a land a landfill we install these um ballast which could be anywhere from 4,500 to 6,000 pounds each um to hold that ground mount in place this is the as you can see the friend's school of Portland which is in Falmouth at Maine actually and this school so schools use a generally use a lot of electricity they're one of the highest users of electricity this school was built in 2015 it's a very efficient envelope and they basically rely on those hyper efficient air source heat pump systems to heat and cool the heat and cool the building um and so with this after the first year of operation of the solar array they determined that they are offsetting 60 percent of their into the school's entire energy consumption with this this solar array this system was installed in 2016 at a high school in New Hampshire it is I believe the first high school in New Hampshire to offset 100 percent of its electricity usage or near 100 percent with solar on site solar electricity um this this photo I think gives a good example of how we can how we can we have the ability to install on a basically um a hillside and we can we can install on a pitch that goes north south as well as east and west as you can see there um this was the largest ground mount that we've done in Maine so far and it's um it is located in westbrook it was installed for wish camper which is a basically a housing authority located based out of Maine and so we installed this in 2016 this is the largest rooftop system we've done to date and this is as you can see 266 kilowatts up at hebron academy this array includes almost a thousand solar panels I think it's 970 solar panels so just for a little uh a little encouragement there are some fun slides at the end here so this I believe they're calling this a actually a net positive car so as you can see with the solar panels on the back of the car um and it's really efficient design it's it's electric but it it basically collects all the power that it needs to run with those solar panels on the back so net neutral car or or net positive if maybe you look into it a little bit more and this is the world's first solar powered plane to fly across the planet so my understanding is that this this project was put together to to show an example of of really the potential of solar energy for for for the world um and the future um and so one final thing that I wanted to touch on is that I recently came across a study by the Brookings Institute which found which basically disproved what's kind of been a a common belief that if you decarbonize you're going to be hindering economic growth or the the economy um and this Brookings Institute study found that in fact um by decarbonizing a lot of states have improved their economy they've they've continued with great economic growth and in many situations have actually accelerated their economic growth so um since solar energy systems are scalable we think it gives home owners business owners and institutions a great opportunity to take advantage or take control of their energy supply their energy bills um supporting a clean energy future and also supporting um a growing um forward forward thinking forward moving economy so thank you very much for for letting me chat about it here tonight um yeah and happy to take take questions so yeah I'm currently building my house and my budget's currently being achieved pretty quickly here but um I like it one question rough in or rough out you know the necessary components I need to install solar panels yeah because you got a great point when I want to get you know looking I'm saying obviously you know nice that's great I want to look ahead and rough in and rough in for future solar panels yeah so we would be more than happy to cut you to come rough in that work um um we generally if we're going to rough in work we we as I know that revision ourselves we we like to do it if you're comfortable with that just because we know we think it's more efficient more cost effective and and can do it we can also basically give you advice on um on you know what we would recommend for for the rough oh great yeah absolutely yeah so we can do uh we can certainly do a quote for heat pumps as well and and can can give you if you contact our shop we can give you an idea of you know what that rough in cost might be and and what it would involve basically so yeah yeah does revision get into advocacy at all for state and there's solar panels yeah yeah we yes we we do um I don't know as much about it so I probably won't be able to answer answer but yeah yeah Brittany would certainly be the one one to talk to you about that so yeah is it practical to um have a system where you're storing your extra electricity on site as opposed to the net metering concept that you discussed earlier absolutely yeah so we we've started to work with lithium ion batteries um it's backup systems we install this past year in the area I think we installed two um two or three lithium ion batteries these were saunin batteries which come over from Germany but they're lithium they're lithium ion technology and basically these battery systems can can function two ways they can they can just function as backup to for the home if the power goes out they can also cycle nightly so if you're interested you place an added value on using solar your solar electricity at night versus electricity from the grid you can cycle the bad batteries nightly so generally they're going to feed a distributed load panel so a basically any essential loads that you select but there I don't know if I imagine many of you are familiar with Tesla but following Tesla's announcement about the power wall um there has been a a lot of interest in the in the battery industry and um people expect it to follow a similar path to what solar's done over the last 10 years in the next coming 10 years um and I think 2017 is actually supposed to be a pretty significant year for for lithium ion uh technology so which is exciting one thing I meant to mention about the solar solar energy electric systems is they will shut down when the power goes out so they basically that's for code purposes so they don't they aren't risking anybody's safety that's working on the power lines yeah that meeting metering is in trouble right politically speaking it's may go away something yeah yeah so so the the main basically what happened so net metering just just to go back is the one to one credit that you were a solar energy customer sees when they send a kilowatt hour of solar out to the grid they export it to the grid you receive that one to one kilowatt hour credit and so uh last august um uh cmp in cmp's territory basically one percent of their peak demand on the grid was supplied by solar so that triggered that triggered a review by the main public utilities commission um for net metering basically triggered a net metering review so the the PUC has has looked at net metering and they put out a and whether or not net metering should stick around whether or not they should reduce the credit value that solar customers receive for electricity sent out to the grid and last fall early winter they put out a proposal um that would slightly reduce that kilowatt hour credit for solar electricity sent out to the grid so you have basically really generally it would reduce if you install a system in 2017 it would reduce that kilowatt hour credit by five percent basically um if you install it in to a system in 2018 it would reduce that credit value by 10 percent and so it's a reduction in credit value for 10 years basically but once you start install that system you lock in the credit value um for 15 years basically so to dive into it a little more deeply so you have two so you have two sections of your electric bill your cmp bill when you when you go home and look at your cmp bill one is for transmission and delivery so that's the cmp side um and then ones for supply um current utility rates for residential average at about 13 cents a kilowatt hour um it's about half of that for the tnd portion of the bill the cmp portion um so 6.5 cents and about half that for the supply so about 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour and so what the PUC has proposed is basically um a 90 credit value for the tnd portion of the bill if you install a system in 2017 and the supply credit remains the same at a one-to-one credit and then it's a declining by 10 credit value so 80 percent in 2018 70 percent in 2019 and so on so that's the proposal and they are currently they've received feedback and comments on that and they're now reviewing that that feedback and will be making a decision on there on whether they're going to adjust net metering or not and what that change would be um sometime between most likely between February and this summer so one thing basically what we're finding when we do a savings projection is that that change does not have a really significant impact on the payback period of the system um and it's still very cost effective to do over the lifetime of the project um one thing to point out is that the the main PUC did have a they had a study done by a third party on the value of solar energy here in the state a couple of years ago and basically that that study found that solar actually actually benefits the grid it adds value to the grid because um solar um or distributed generation or solar generation is produced close to where it's being used so it reduces line loss um it prevents the need for transmission upgrades to get more power out to those sites and it's also producing power um at times of the year when there's real or times of the day and year when there's really high demand on the grid so those sunny hot days when a lot of people are using their AC solar is feeding a lot of electricity back into the grid and helping reduce the amount of electricity that what they call ancillary power plants have to provide which are costly and dirty to come online and feed power into the grid so the study found that solar is actually is is more valuable than the than the current retail rate of electricity and so this proposed rule change that ignores that study basically um the massachusetts the equivalent of their PUC recently had a similar review process and they found that they basically their determination was that the utility did not provide enough data to show that um that solar doesn't deserve or basically solar um does what's called a cost shift um and they therefore um didn't see a need or or it necessary to adjust net metering or their their solar rules basically that's that's tough to say so it's right now the 30 federal tax credit is available it was extended through 2019 so yep so if if if it isn't changed if you install a system in 2019 you can take advantage of that 30 federal tax credit for residential customers if you install it's a drop down after 2019 so if you install install in 2020 it drops down to a 26 credit and then if you install in 2021 it's a 22 credit and then it goes away after 2021 so that says it as it stands right now yeah so um 99 percent of the systems that we install currently are our grid tied systems um but we certainly will look at off grid applications a lot of times it can make sense if you're if the basically you're building a new home um or you already have an off you know you're already you don't have any power at your home but you want to add power to the home but the cost of extending that utility line to your home exceeds the cost of a battery backup system or is in the range of the cost of that battery backup system then it can be a really good application also if you just place an added value on being off grid um then that certainly that certainly could be a great project for the home usually we will try to make sure that the the solar installation is going to be maximizing production in the summertime and wintertime so not just on an annual basis but at at during both seasons which means that usually we'll install it at a steeper pitch than we would um in uh on just a regular grid tied application so we're ideally you'd have like a 45 degree or a 12 pitch yeah so um in a house that is currently traditionally electrified with america for example yeah um the interior electrical wiring is it remains intact is that correct there's no alterations to that system exactly right so we would just we would basically use unless you need it you need an upgrade um which is really uncommon unless it's like you know unless it's a really old fuse box or a very old unsafe um electric panel you we would leave everything in place as it is and we would just interconnect the solar array through what's called a back feed breaker so we could throw a breaker into your electric panel and that would that's how we would interconnect it to your current your existing electrical system or we can do um what's called the supply side connection or a line side tap where we where we go on the other side of your basically your your um your main breaker but we we uh we we can interconnect right to your electrical system without changing anything good question i have a little more questions yeah oh absolutely um in the particular situation i'm looking at um is a farm with three separate buildings all that require electricity yeah so is is it practical to assume that you would put an array on the ground and run the electric to the three separate buildings or do you put panels on all three buildings that that's a great question and actually and i i realized that i didn't address it um but we with current um net metering rules you can actually offset up to um nine accounts that you it's actually it's ten accounts not including the one where you interconnect the solar array but you can offset nine other um accounts that you own if you have the same name on that electric bill you can install and interconnect the solar array at one of those buildings and then um but you can size the array to offset electricity using in that building as well as the two other buildings um and basically you would just build up credits that would be applied to those other accounts