Mandate Solar Water Heating

I have been talking to people in the Caribbean about solar water heating lately, and I get a universally supportive response from anyone that has used solar water heating. Everyone who has solar water heaters love them and are thankful they bought one when they did. They universally agree they never run out of water, they saved tons of money, and there is little or no maintenance.

One gentleman came to talk to me about installing solar pv to lower his electricity bill, but he most of the  time telling me how installing a solar water heater cut his bill in half. For someone who has just built his first house in his twenties, a solar water heater can save $500 a year for 30 years, as much as $15,000.

The islands of Hawaii have similar energy problems to Anguilla with high electricity costs and difficult transport issues for fuel. In 2010, Hawaii required the installation of solar water heaters for new construction. They made a provision where an owner could request an exception if the design of the home was not suitable but otherwise the planning regulations mandating solar water heating.
The law has been very successful without any great resistance, as it just makes sense in a tropical location. A simple requirement at the planning stage can save a large amount of oil consumption for no cost, in fact significant cost savings for the consumer.

I would like to suggest to Caribbean Governments that they make solar water heating mandatory in the planning regulations and building requirements. While there is always resistance to anything mandatory here, this is one item that only makes sense to anyone who thinks about it. The main aim would be to make home builders stop and think about solar for hot water instead of electricity.
I would also encourage banks who are offering mortgages for homes to require solar heaters, as lower electricity bills make it easier to make the monthly payments.

Anyone using electricity, currently US$ 0.43 per KWh, to heat water in the Caribbean, needs to rethink their plans. While I understand that people do not like being told what they must do, think about renters and apartments. The apartment tenant cannot usually install solar water heating and so must pay for the electricity cost, adding to the cost of living for people who already may be struggling.

Mandating solar for hot water is an opportunity for Caribbean Governments to reduce the use of fossil fuels through legislation without the need for costly subsidies and incentives. It is time for the Governments to take an active role in reducing fossil fuel usage and associated costs.

How to cut your electricity bill

I think everyone in the Caribbean is aware of the cost of electricity and the impact is has on our daily lives. Who doesn't dread getting that bill from the utility? There is a tangible fear of the rates going up, which, in Anguilla, is supposed to happen soon. Hundreds of customers are disconnected at present and it is likely more will join them.

Despite the very high cost of electricity, I believe there is much that people can do to reduce their electricity usage and to bring down their costs for their homes, stores, factories and offices. If you save money on electricity, the savings benefit you for ever more. A small saving now can be a huge amount over twenty years.

As an example, I looked at our freezer. We have a stand alone freezer as well as a fridge/freezer. By using a cheap device called a Kill-A-Watt, I was able to measure the power usage of that appliance and work out that it cost me $25/month to keep running. Our solution was to move it to our solar powered warehouse, but that's not an option for everyone.

Here's some tips I can offer from experience to help keep your costs in check.

Replace your hot water heater with a Solar Water Heater

I have discussed this with many potential customers. Many people believe putting timer on your electrically powered hot water heater reduces costs. But all that does is cause the heater to run more when it is on, or reduces the amount of hot water available. Neither are solutions. The reason hot water heater timers are sold is for places that have Time-Of-Use charges, that is, the utility gives you cheaper electricity rates at night. Putting a timer on the heater in that situation makes sense, as you get to heat the water at lower rates. Putting a timer on a hot water heater when there is no rate advantage is not sensible, as water heaters are well insulated and do not loose much over time.

In most of the Caribbean, or certainly in Anguilla, there is no TOU charges or incentives. Putting a timer on a heater has no benefit.

Solar water heaters on Carimar Beach Club laundry building
heats all the water being used in the laundry.

Let me put as much emphasis on this as I possibly can: heating water with electricity is insane. We in the Caribbean have the best, most constant, solar resource available. We have sun all day every day, save for a few rare days when it rains a lot. Solar water heaters will eliminate all your water heating costs for comparatively little money and you will probably never be without as much hot water as you can use.

If you have an electric hot water heater, run, don't walk, to replace it with a solar unit! If the unit comes with an electric booster element - don't connect it! It is not necessary in the Caribbean. I can't tell you how many times I have looked at solar water heaters with electrical elements that are connected, and the owner wonders why they are still paying a lot for electricity.

Install LED lighting

There was a time when we advocated replacing all those tungsten light bulbs with compact fluorescence, but now, I have to recommend LED. The energy savings from LED are tremendous. Compare a 60 watt incandescent bulb being used 8 hours a day to the LED equivalent, which would be about 7 watts. For 365 days, 8 hours, 10 years, that is a saving of US$665 per light bulb at present rates (in Anguilla). For a store or a hotel, that's potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars over the same period.

LED lighting has come a long way and is reliable and cheap and the light has a beautiful quality.

Keep the heat out

There is a growing trend to build homes, especially rental properties, with floor to ceiling walls of glass, often the whole span of the front of the building. They are often built facing into the sun with the idea of maximizing the views. Without air conditioning, the rooms are ovens during the day, and cooling them is an un-winnable battle. The consequence is very high electricity costs. For rental properties, constant air conditioning is required to assure guest comfort, and the guests will generally leave the air conditioning on all day to avoid having to walk into a hot room.

3M Prestige "Clear Heat Control" Window Film can reduce the infra red transfer by 97% without altering the appearance of the glass, and remove the ultra-violet light that is so damaging to your interiors. We recently installed films on a skylight that was causing a tremendous amount of heat, and during installation we were able to compare the completed half to the untreated half. The difference was incredible. While the films are not cheap, the electricity costs for air conditioning these spaces make it a quick payback.

Set your thermostats properly

I can't calculate how many offices I go into that have the air conditioning thermostats set as low as they will go. If there is a hand held thermostat or controller, the staff will inevitably set it al the way down so as (they think) to cool the room quicker. That does not work, but it does mean the A/C unit will run flat out all day. Government offices and facilities are terrible offenders here.

If you have a company with air conditioned space, install a fixed thermostat and lock the ability to change the temperature. The thermostat is designed to keep the temperature constant without human interference, so there is no reason for staff to touch it other than to turn the A/C off and on. Consider a timer for that, people are forgetful. Set your room temperature to a reason level which does nto require the wearing of overcoats. Twenty years ago, very few offices in the Caribbean were air conditioned, now, the staff come to work in wool suits and jackets. Really? 

Motion sensing light switches

If you have areas that are rarely occupied, such as store rooms, break rooms, toilets, consider replacing the light switches with motion sensing units. It is common for people to leave the lights on in these spaces, and a motion sensing unit will turn them off soon after, potentially saving thousands of dollars.

Do the math

If you are buying appliances, look at the energy efficiency of the unit in terms of current electricity rates. When electricity was cheap, it was often not worth the extra cost to buy the slightly more efficient units, but nowadays, there is a very good reason to select efficiency over the lowest cost. Just remember you are going to be living with your decisions for many years, and electricity is likely to get a lot more expensive during that time. Units only 10 years old can use twice as much electricity as a new ENERGY STAR® labeled model. Don't worry about appliances you rarely use, it is the fridge, freezer, washing machines and dryers that soak up the largest amounts of power. Concentrate on replacing them with efficient units as soon as possible.

Credit: US Dept. of Energy

Don't buy appliances you don't need.  

Before buying that chest freezer, consider what you are going to be putting in it. Most chest freezer owners don't remember what is at the bottom of the freezer.
If you can buy your food when you need it, why pay to store it? It's not going to save you money to buy something in bulk if you have to store it for a year. Let the supermarkets be your storage, buy fresh food and avoid waste.

Computer to sleep

If you have a desktop computer, make sure it goes to sleep after a few minutes of idling. Computers can soak up half a unit of electricity an hour and be left on for days. That adds up. Modern computers can go to sleep and wake back up in seconds without changing the way you work.

Swimming pools

If you have a pool, you probably run a pump all day to circulate the water through the filter. If your pump runs for a short period of time, then it is probably to large. The faster you push the water through the system, the more friction loss you are experiencing.

A pool pump can be 30% of the electricity usage of a house. For most pool installations, a solar powered pump will remove that cost altogether without a lot of cost. Solar powered pool pump can be installed for a s little as $3,000 and can pay back in 18 months.

If you are heating your pool consider solar pool heating. Again, the initial outlay is not large, but the savings are enormous.

Installing a solar pool heater on our house

Turn things off

It still amazes me in these times of high energy costs that people leave things running that they don't need. Jo-Anne and I have become fanatical about turning off lights, computers, fans, TV's, chargers and anything else that can sap electricity while not doing anything useful. In my office, I have a switch that turns off all the equipment that does not need to be on overnight. With one switch I get rid of the all the the non-essential equipment.

Pay attention to your bill

A household electricity bill should not change much from month to month. If your bill increases suddenly, find out why. It may be that your meter was estimated, or that you bought a new appliance. Keep track of what you are using and be proactive, if you are using more than you should, you need to know about it now.
ANGLEC now offers online bill tracking, you can see online what you are using and have used over the years.

Build smart

If you are lucky enough to be building your house now, you have a number of opporunities to avoid high electricity bills. Make sure you include these tips into your building. Also, make sure you will be able to add grid tied solar PV to your roof later. Design your house to have sufficient roof space that faces south. It costs almost nothing to make that provision now, but it could become a make-or-break issue in a few years if oil prices increase substantially. Distributed generation through rooftop solar is going to be normal in a few years, make sure you are part of that trend.

It takes discipline to lower your costs but the savings are tangible. Don't get disheartened if you don't see a lot of change initially, it has to become your way of life, but I promise you it will pay off over time. Before long, it will become automatic and you will be able to look back on all your savings.

What would you do with free electricity

Having installed a solar pv system on our warehouse rooftop, I looked at the power usage and realized we had a lot of power we did not have a use for. It seemed criminal to make power and not use it, but that is exactly what we are doing. This is a normal situation in off-grid solar because of the need to allow a buffer for the bad days, you need to know you will always recharge your batteries even when the day is cloudy.
While our extra power is relatively small, the same issues apply to one of our larger installations, where we make as much as 20KW of excess at peak power, especially on weekends. While that power could be returned to the grid for use elsewhere, there is no financial incentive to do so.

So it got me thinking about creative ways to use excess power. We solved our own issue by moving our deep freeze to the warehouse, which used up enough to make me feel happier about the situation.

Free Energy

But for larger systems, what could be done. Any time you have free energy, there has to be a way to turn that into a product or service that would be more viable. But the power usage has to be steady but not critical, so  something like welding is not going to be a viable solution.
It is very easy to make large amounts of electricity with solar. It is also easy to make large amounts of hot water by solar. The challenge is to find a product or service that uses either or both in large amounts.

Our ideas

Here are some of the ideas I thought of:
Bakery - but the bread would have to be produced during the day.
Ice Making - perfect, make it at the right time, store and sell.
Water Production - Reverse Osmosis requires a lot of power.
Service Laundry - wash and dry during the day.

Clearly there are ways to make the best use of spare power, and maybe there are some very creative ideas to be found. It is an attractive puzzle to me, one that begs a good answer.


So what would you do? If you have an idea, tell me about it.
http://www.cometenergysystems.com/contact.html

Lead the way or fall behind

Why no action on solar won't work out well for the electrical utilities



There is a lot of discussion in Anguilla at the moment about the need to implement renewable energy policies.  Most interesting is the opportunity for solar PV to make a difference in the average Anguillian household. Nobody doubts how effective solar PV can be when interconnected with the homeowner's electricity supply, something we called net-metering. Anguilla has a plentiful energy resource in the sun, and harnessing it to provide electricity has become highly cost effective at the residential level, offering tremendous return on investment.
The current discussions revolve around advice being offered by Castalia Strategic Advisors, a Washington based consultancy, who have been employed by the Government to advise on the adoption of renewable energy an Anguilla.
While still in initial consultations, the consultants have presented the opinion that net-metering is not the  best way to go forward, and that a obscure arrangement known as net-billing should be adopted. Under net-billing, the homeowner gets to buy back the electricity he has created for much more that he gets credited for the same electricity. This arrangement is virtually unknown in the developed world and has never been successful in increasing the adoption of residential solar anywhere in the world, as it takes away the financial benefits of installing solar.
While this is ideal for the utility, who gets a virtually free source of electricity they can sell at great profit, it is disastrous for the solar system owner and as such, will be doomed to fail. It is likely that there will be no movement towards the adoption of residential solar if this arrangement is part of the new law.
One of the reasons why grid-interconnected solar is the preferred way to adopt solar is the high cost of storage. We are all familiar with off-grid solar, popularized by log cabins in the woods having a solar system that stores the energy by day and provides electricity at night. For situations where there is no utility supply, this is a great option and one I use on my warehouse.
Off-grid solar has not been financially feasible for two reasons - the high cost of batteries and the equally high cost of solar panels. Solar panels have been coming down in price so dramatically that they are no longer a barrier to entry for most people. Batteries remain a huge problem for everyone, particularly the electric car industry. If electric cars could store enough energy for a 500 mile trip, recharge in a few hours, and last for the lifetime of the car, it would be over for gasoline. Consequently, there is tremendous funding and effort being put into the development of the ideal battery technology. Research into nano technologies show great promise and there is hardly a high level research lab that isn't looking at this problem. The American, United Kingdom, Japanese and German academic institutes and engineering companies are working furiously to find solution, because the entity that patents the solution will revolutionize the world and make huge profits. This is the Manhattan Project of our times.
Meanwhile, back in Anguilla, the utility, Government and the consultants are continuing down the road of de-incentivizing solar pv, much to the frustration of the population. Because of the lack of a workable storage solution, there is no option. What will happen when there is?
And this is the point of this post. At some point in the near future, a battery technology will be discovered that will be cheap, robust and reliable. It will take as much extra power as you can generate, store it efficiently, and last for your lifetime. It will not care about depth of discharge, charge rates or water levels, it will just work. This disruptive technology is inevitable because of the demand in the electric vehicle industry. Can anyone seriously suggest that all that research and effort will not result in a technological revolution? The lead acid battery, invented in 1859, will go the way of film cameras and the vinyl records. In fact, the lead acid battery is older than those technologies.
When that day comes, then all of this discussion on net-metering will be irrelevant. The homeowner will simply disconnect from the grid and enjoy his own electricity supply for only the cost of his initial investment. He will never have a power outage or an electricity bill. This is exactly the scenario so many Anguillians have asked for.
The danger to the utility is not the introduction of met-metering, as this encourages the homeowner to invest in clean energy and supply a portion of it to the other grid users. The large and inevitable danger is that the law prevents the connection of systems to the grid, frustrating the home-owners until battery technology catches up and the homeowners install solar and move off the grid altogether. At that point, there may be a mass exodus of well-funded customers from the grid, leaving the poorer customers to bear the brunt of the fixed cost of operation.
Anyone who thinks this can't happen has only to look back a few years. There was a utility in Anguilla that had a monopoly on their services and was charging ridiculous rates. They owned the cables that delivered the service to the customers, and with that lock could keep out any threat of competition. That utility was, of course, Cable & Wireless. When international calls were $2/minute, this utility told us they had to be paid the cost of distributing the service and there was nothing they could do to reduce it. They told us introducing competition would result in lower quality services and hurt the consumer. Meanwhile, they made enormous profits.
But then everything changed, along came the wireless phone, high speed internet, competition in the market and Skype. The cost of a long distance call dropped to 2 cents per minute and the utility was forced to compete with other companies. Most importantly to this article, they were still stuck with the responsibility of maintaining the physical network as some customers had to have hard lines.
In this case, the Government of Anguilla made decisions that benefited the consumer, not the utility, and Anguillians gained choice. The same needs to happen to the electricity network.
The focus of the Government should not be on whether to allow connection to the grid, but how best to ensure people remain connected to the grid, while increasing the adoption of renewable energy sources to protect us from climate change and energy price volatility.

Why Net-Billing won't work to promote Solar

Although pretty much everyone in the Caribbean recognizes solar electricity as being an attractive and viable form of energy, good for the environment and pretty cool to boot, the adoption of solar has been contentious and slow to come to fruition. One of the main reasons for this is the need to interconnect with the grid to make any financial sense.

While almost the entire developed world has adopted an inter-tie arrangement known as net-metering, most of the British or previously British Caribbean countries have played around with another method, known as net-billing. It is critical to understand the nuanced differences between the two methods, and to understand how each of these would affect the adoption rate of solar.

Net-Metering

When a residential solar system is interconnected with the grid, the home owner makes electricity while the sun shines. That electricity is either consumed in the house, or goes into the grid, through the meter, to be fed to the next consumer who needs it. When the homeowner needs power because the sun is not shining, he receives back the electricity he previously generated. This ia very simple arrangement, requiring only a bi-directional meter. It is generally accepted in the world of renewables as being the lowest acceptable way to incentivise the adoption of green energy sources.

Net-Billing

In a net-billing arrangement, the homeowner makes the same electricity while the sun shines, and as long as he uses it, there is no issue. When he has excess, it also goes out to the grid. But, and here is the critical issue, he only gets credited at an arbitrary value way below the retail rate he is being charged. So when he comes home and turns his lights on, he uses the electricity he generated early, but pays through the nose for it. 

There are so many problems with net-billing that it's hard to know where to start but here are a few.

• Net-billing removes the financial incentive to install solar, so there will never be any tangible impact as long as it is in place
• The rate at which consumers are credited for their excess is open to being manipulated by the utility, as the rate is typically set relative to what they will acknowledge as their "avoided cost". That cost is whatever they say it is.
• The consumer cannot predict the return on investment his system will bring him (huge issue).

It is generally recognised among the policy makers as an abject failure. There are so few places that have implemented it at all, and it has universally failed to significantly increase the adoption of residential solar pv.

Return on Investment

Installing a grid-tied solar system is really only a financial transaction. The home-owner spends a boat-load of money, and for years enjoys a reduction in electricity consumption and cost. They do not get protection from power outages nor independence from the grid. While some people take great pride in their system, the lack of buttons to play with makes it a poor hobby. 

When the consumer considers installing solar, they have one question. What do I earn back? It can be expressed as a Payback Period, Internal Rate of Return, or other financial calculations, but whatever method is used to value the flow of money, it is what the consumer what to understand.

In a net-metering scenario, this is easy. We know accurately how much electricity will be generated from experience, the sun comes out every day for about the same amount on average. We know the value of that electricity, so we can easily multiple the production by the value. Easy-peasy, we can predict the return on investment, and the consumer is a happy chappy. He takes his Return On Investment calculations to his Bank/Wife/Rich Brother and finds the cash he needs to fund his purchase. It all just works.

Systems built under a net-billing arrangement do not enjoy that predicability. There is no way to know how much of the electricity will be exported and how much will be used in the home. Exported electricity is not worth the same amount as consumed electricity. To fully grasp this complex issue, we need a real life example. Let's say the home-owner's children on school break and are watching TV. The TV takes electricity. The sun is out, so that electricity is coming from the solar system. Mr/Ms. Home-Owner saves the the value of the electricity not used, let's say US43c per unit. 

Now let's say the children go back to school. There is no TV on that day to use the electricity, so it is exported to the grid at, let's say, US18c. The children come home, and after doing their homework, get to watch TV. As it is evening, they are watching when there is no solar. The same unit of electricity now cost US43c minus the exported credit of US18c. The home-owner has generated the same amount of electricity from his solar, but now he pays US25c to use that unit he generated, a substantially lower return on investment. 

The most important point is that there is no mathematical way to calculate the the Return On Investment, therefore, there will be little or no investment.

Net-billing is a still born concept that dooms the renewable energy initiatives to failure. It has no place in climate change mitigation, energy volatility avoidance or any green projects. Net-billing is just pandering to the utilities desire to be the one true provider of electricity regardless of economic and environmental issues. Government needs to concentrate on protecting the consumer, not the utility.

We complete a 30KW commercial installation in Anguilla

Hughes Medical Center
About six months ago we were approached by Dr. Lowell Hughes about installing Solar PV on his building. Dr. Hughes is one of Anguilla's most progressive doctors and has build a state of the art medical center. 



The Hughes Medical Center is a large building with a flat roof, surrounded by a 2' parapet. The roof is ideal for solar and so we proposed a 30KW system which he accepted.


Construction started in  December and took five weeks. December is a great time to work on a roof in the Caribbean, the breeze is steady and the temperatures are comfortable. We installed 9 strings of 15 CanadianSolar 230W polycrystalline modules, 3 strings per inverter. The strings are mounted to tilt at about 10 degrees to grab as much sun as possible.  The slowest part of the installation was orking out the shading and moving air conditioners where they got in the way.


A large crane and a job handler made loading the modules very easy, all the equipment was on the roof in an hour. Compare that to climbing ladders with each module on your back, this was a lot easier. We even loaded a pallet jack on the roof to move the pallets of modules around as we installed them.


We mounted three 10KW inverters on a wall with disconnects and a summing three phase load center. Each inverter is a 10KW SMA 10000TL-US, a transformerless design.


Commissioning the system went smoothly but over the next few days we discovered a problem with high grid voltage. The facility is located close to the main backbone and the grid tends to run hot. The service is at 11KV to the customer's transformer and the transformer is setup for 220/127V This is fine for 220V equipment but the inverters see high Line to Neutral voltages that sometimes exceed the mandated window and cause the inverter to go offline.  


The system produces about 160KWh a day and with Anguilla's wonderful sunshine, should produce about 40% of the facilities power requirements. Anguilla has no mountains or significant hills so there is minimal clouds to block the sunshine. 

We installed a SMA Webbox to monitor the system and upload the data to the Sunny Portal site. The statistics for the site are online in real time here. Sunny Portal has some very useful features, such as the ability to get an email if the production numbers vary from the average which lets you know if an inverter goes offline or trips out excessively. The webbox is a must for larger sites and one of the reasons I love SMA inverters.

Taxes won’t fix the problem

For the last couple of years I have tried to draw attention to an impending problem for the Caribbean Islands, especially tourism focused countries such as Anguilla and to frame a solution involving renewable energy technology. The decline in tourist numbers due to the recession was clearly going to impact the revenue for the private sector and by extension, for the Governments. In countries such as Anguilla, where tourism is up to 99% of the foreign currency earnings, this change in revenue was going to be difficult to survive. There’s nothing new here, it is well known.
 
But the other shoe that would drop was the increase in energy costs. Energy makes up a large portion of the costs that hotels and resorts pay. In general, energy costs do not vary much with occupancy or revenue, as rooms are still air conditioned even when empty and cutting room rates leaves less profit to pay expenses.

Newer hotels are generally built with energy efficiency in mind, although it always amazes me how little focus is given to real energy costs when designing hotels. Older facilities are generally in more trouble, they were built when there was no air conditioning, their electrical systems are antiquated and the costs to renovate these systems are exorbitant. It was pretty clear that as energy costs went up, and revenues went down, we would meet a crisis point where the hotels and resorts would have difficulty staying in business.  The cross-over point would be different for each property, of course, but in the long term is inevitable unless there is change.
 
Time and time again I have advocated the need for an aggressive approach to energy efficiency and the implementation of new technologies. I have always identified the main issue as being legislative, unless the political will is there to enact change and encourage investment, legislation will not be reformed and the use of solar prevented. I mention solar in particular because it has become the single most significant and mainstream way to cut energy costs, and it is the technology most in need of legislative support.
 
In recent months we have seen some trace of change, in that the Minister for Infrastructure has written a lengthy press release on the intent to find funding to implement some changes, and that these changes, if funded, could happen in about two years.

We don’t have two years.

There’s no doubt in my mind that two years will be come four, and that after that period, trials and pilot projects will implemented, if funding be found, and that some information will be gained but held closely within the administration, to gather dust on shelves. It is unlikely this will bring real and tangible relief to the private sector in the form of reduced energy costs.

The reality is, none of this is necessary. Implementing solar is not rocket science. It is used all over the world, in major first world countries, in small African states, in Mongolia, jsut about everywhere. It would take but a small legislative bill of a few well written pages to encourage and support the introduction of netmetering and residential solar. It could be a reality in six months, three if there was real determination. It would not solve the world’s problems, but it would give at least one step forward, a solution to at least some of the energy cost issues. And it would cost the Government nothing.

Unfortunately, it seems the Government’s will seek to solve its revenue problems by introducing VAT and income tax. These two measures will worsen the problem for the private sector and do nothing to generate new foreign exchange. All it will probably do is take more money from companies struggling to pay their energy bills and reduce employment as companies either fold or reduce staffing. Taxes will not address the issue of declining revenue or increasing energy costs, in fact it will worsen them. Increasing taxation is only kicking the can down the road a short distance.

I don’t want to seem opposed to taxation, as someone affected by the planned increase in taxation I am not happy but I recognize the need to fund the state. What I am upset with is the inability to look ahead, to see problems and to adopt solutions that require some vision. Instead, we see Governments take the same old path of ‘do nothing, wait until the crisis is critical then introduce taxes’. Anguilla could be different.