I did a quick note pad calculation last night of power costs. Full of assumptions of course.

Based on a monthly electric bill of $200 and a rise of 5% per year in cost for electricity over the next 20 years I’d be paying something like $80,000. So based on that if I pay $40000 out for the PV / battery system now. Assuming the PV’s last the predicted 20 to 25 years and the batteries last 10 years. It ultimately will save me $40000, averaged out over 20 years $2000 a year that’s pretty significant

I guess the other way of looking at it is if I put $40000 in the bank how much interest will I get over the next 20 years

Do I really want to save the planet??

I'd never be able to keep $40,000 in the bank long enough to tell the difference

To me it's not all about saving the planet. The immediate idea of being independent from publicly used utilities and not subject to the vagaries of market fluctuations offers the greatest attraction to me. If along the way it helps, by way of reducing greenhouse gases, then all well and good. A good thing on two counts.

it's those 'big boys toys'

Here're a few statements I've pulled from my own research notes on solar energy, might be of interest or could 'spark' some debate?

There are three types of solar energy systems:-

• Solar electricity as a power supply
• Solar heat for household heating
• Solar water heating, for preheating domestic water

Solar electricity can be used for:-

• Off grid cottage/home power.
• Grid tie in (requires a digital meter that can adjust for reverse flow). Unfortunately no power in a power outage here.
• Complementary systems that only provide some power (the rest comes from the grid)

Solar Electricity installations typically include:-

• Solar Panels
• Charge controller
• Batteries (2v, 6v, 12v, 24v, 48v)
• Power inverter(s)
• Wiring (gauge specific to the DC voltage)
• Panels and breaker boxes, as required

Designing a Solar Electricity system involves:-

• Determining the amount of power required to run household applications e.g. lights, refrigerator, water pump
• Determining the number of batteries (based on the duration required where batteries supply power without charge)
• Selecting the “ideal” voltage for the batteries (I've heard 6v but need to do more research)
• Deciding if a low voltage system is adequate, or AC 60Hz mains is required (or a combination)
• If AC mains inversion is required, a decision over the output quality is required (pure or modified sine wave). This decision is based on cost and requirements of applications.
• Choosing a Charge Controller (based on cost versus features)
• Selecting the correct wire gauge, junction boxes and breaker panels (where required)

Solar heating (recycled pop/beer cans)
These guys provide a low cost, easy to install pop-can panel: http://www.cansolair.com/. I've read they're cheap to buy, are easy to install and work well but does anyone have any experience with one or know someone with one? Are they really that good?

Some say they're really easy to make, DIY-style:




Solar water (pre-)heating:
Does what it says really, preheats the water for the hot water tank. These seem to getting very popular now so lots of info out there via google.

Green Incentives & Rebates Across Canada: http://www.ec.gc.ca/financement-fund...n&n=EF8AE9FC-1


NB example:
"New Brunswick Energy Efficient New Homes Program

Program Type: Home purchase/construction

Description: The New Homes Program provides financial assistance to home owners of new homes if their home is R-2000 certified or has an EnerGuide for Houses rating of 80 or more. There are three levels of financial incentives available:

• The basic grant of $1,000 for new EnerGuide 80 or R-2000 certified homes regardless of the heating system type

• The Central Heating – Electric Grant of $2,000 for new EnerGuide 80 or R-2000 certified homes that have an electric boiler, furnace or ENERGY STAR® rated (or equivalent) air source heat pump as the primary source of heating

• The Central Heating – Non-Electric Grant of $3,000 for new EnerGuide 80 or R-2000 certified homes that have an eligible non-electric central heating system such as a natural gas, oil or wood furnace or boiler or a geothermal heat pump.

An additional ENERGY STAR bonus incentive of $250 is available as a top-up to any of the three grants to homeowners who install energy efficient lighting and purchase two ENERGY STAR home appliances. Eligible appliances include refrigerators, freezers, and clothes washers."

NS examples:

Nova Scotia EnerGuide for New Houses Program
Program Type: Home purchase/ construction

Description: The government of Nova Scotia is offering rebates on the cost of an EnerGuide for New Houses evaluation.Homeowners who undertake a pre-construction energy audit (based on building plans) at a cost of $350 may be eligible for a rebate on a portion of the evaluation cost. After construction, homeowners who have a second energy evaluation will receive a rebate of $175. Homeowners that receive an EnerGuide rating of 77 or more for the second evaluation will receive a rebate of $350.


Solar Water or Air Heating Rebate

Program Type: Home renewable energy generation

Description: The Province of Nova Scotia is offering a 15% rebate on the cost of solar water heating systems used for year-round applications, and for solar air heating systems. The maximum rebate is $20,000 and is available to all building types in the Province (residential, commercial, institutional and industrial). Systems must be purchased and installed after January 1, 2008 and must appear on Natural Resources Canada’s list of approved systems. Applicants should also consider applying for Federal rebates for such systems: a 25% rebate exists for the commercial, industrial and institutional sectors, and a rebate of $500 is available for existing buildings in the residential sector.

If you can achieve an average return of 3.7% or better (not that difficult) then the rational choice is to invest the $40,000 and hook up to the grid.

Cansolair is a Newfoundland company and I have seen a few systems around installed on houses. Have no direct feedback on how good they are though. To my mind they are not very sightly but the simplicity and presumably relatively low cost appeals. Unfortunately I don't have a suitable south facing wall to put one on.

A buddy is supposedly building the homemade pop can version to heat his two story shed/workshop/mancave complex. If he gets around to it I'll let you know how he gets on!

True. But one one hand you have something that has utility value and provides some of your energy needs and on the other you have a bunch of paper that may or may not be worth anything in 10 years.

I'd invest the $40k in a sustainable off-grid energy source if it was an option.

NWAB,dealing with Energuide 80, and preferably higher, and all it entails is what I do for a living as a certified energy advisor. Previous to coming to Canada I had my own business building extremely energy efficient houses, built very close to the Passivhaus standard. Like yourself, all my life in construction ( to bloody long really)
You are intending to do the right thing in terms of insulation, a code built house is the poorest quality house that can legally be built. Aim for walls up to R40-50, attic spaces to around R70, put in the best quality triple glazed windows that you can afford and get the right glazing for orientation of the house. Check out the U values and solar heat gain co efficient of these. Difficult to get over here and most builders looking at Passive house standard get European units. Some are now available in the U.S. Get the house very, very airtight and install heat recovery ventilation. Again, the European units come out best for efficiency, but cost more.
Once you have sorted out all of this then look at your heating as you cannot get heat pumps etc sized correctly until you have an accurate heat loss/gain calculation.
The Daikin ductless air source are very good and local folks who have fitted them have had them heating well at -17C. Geothermal can be expensive and, if you get the building envelope right, may even be overkill.
Solar for hot water , do it straight away, it works and I have personal experience of this. Solar for electric generation, again I have used this myself coupled with a small wind turbine, I would seriously wait another 4-5 years before installing. At the moment that is the probably not the best bang for buck that you will spend. Costs of equipment is dropping 20-30% per year and the technology is also getting much better. On day one you should be investing in insulation and air tightness, you only really get one go at your building envelope. Remember, if you can take away the need for heat then you don't need so much heat to start with.

Me three
Let us know how it goes and good luck!

Tracy

Thank you Inse for a very useful and informative post

Aiming for R40-50 in the walls I’m finding really hard to achieve closes I’ve got so far is using a product called http://www.airkretecanada.com/ and increasing the walls to 2 x 8”. It seems that most of the blown products on the market are either full of CFC’s or have such bad reviews that I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole even though they claim to be all singing and dancing products. Have you any ideas / suggestions?

I have also found a company in Canada who supplied the windows for the first Passivhaus to be built here they use fibre glass frames not UPVC http://www.inlinefiberglass.com/index.html

Just waiting for more info back from both companies ATM

I’ve also done a quick check for the grants etc, VERY nice, be really interesting to see if I can get this house to net zero!

Are you going to make the walls of poured concrete over styrofoam? That's a popular construction method and, I understand, provides very energy efficient walls.


(For the record, I'm in the scoffing at your septic and well estimate camp, but don't want to make a war of it).

the basement will be done with ICF blocks it's quite an easy construction method and as you say quite a high R value problem is the R value you get is all you can get unless you put up internal stud work and insulate that as well. as I said in my last post with the stud construction I can easily increase the dimension of the stud to allow for thicker insulation which will not add too much to the build cost but allow another 2" of insulation

NWAB,
Have you received the e-mail I sent earlier? Not sure if it went off OK as I've been having some internet problems today.

no not recieved e mail try sending it as a private message on this..