Halifax can become “Canada’s solar city,” says Richard MacLellan, the city’s manager of sustainability. MacLellan has brought forward a bold plan: the city will not only pay all the upfront costs for homeowners to install solar water systems, but will also figure out all the bureaucratic hassles, arrange government rebates and negotiate with the contractors who install the systems.
MacLellan thinks the city could help install between 500 and 700 systems a year, and that it wouldn’t cost the city a penny, and won’t cost homeowners any upfront money. In fact, the city might make money on the program.
If implemented, the program will work like this: the city will be loaned $5 million through the Federal Canadian Municipalities’ Green Municipal Fund, a program funded by the federal government, at very low-interest rates. There might also be the potential for $1 million in grants. That money will be used to hire and train a couple of city employees to work the program, and to pay for the upfront installation costs of the solar heating systems. Because the city will be purchasing at such a large scale, it expects to get significant cost savings through the tendering process—which will include not just purchasing the equipment, but also hiring the contractors to install it. The city workers will assess the potential for solar on individual properties, and arrange for all the provincial and federal rebates. The homeowners will pay for the system through a annual bill that comes with their property tax—it will depend on the house, but typically the homeowner will pay $400, while their annual energy savings are $500, so the homeowner is still saving $100 each year.
Halifax council warmly received the idea Tuesday, and directed MacLellan to work out all the details and bring the full plan back. There are some minor changes in provincial law that need to be implemented, the funding secured and a public outreach program initiated, but MacLellan thinks the program could be up and running by next fall.
My solar water heating system
I had a solar water heating system installed on my house a couple of months ago—the picture above shows the tanks in my basement. It’s a Thermo Dynamics system, installed by Doctor Solar.
It’s a very simple system. We’re a household of two, so we only needed one 4′ x8′ solar panel, which was placed on the roof. Larger households would need two panels, typically.
The panel heats an antifreeze fluid, which in turn runs through a pipe down to the basement, where the water tanks are.
A traditional water tank is a simple operation—water from the water main out in the street comes into the tank, where is it heated by electricity or fuel oil. The water in the water main can be quite cold, especially in winter, so heating it up to the point where you can take a shower with it takes a lot of energy.
My new water heating system cuts that energy usage by instead heating up the water from the street with the sun. It accomplishes this with the use of a solar storage tank—that’s the big 60 gallon tank on the right. The antifreeze runs through a heat exchanging system– the little box on the far right. The heat exchange unit has a pump, powered by a separate solar voltaic panel– a 1′ x 1′ panel that’s attached to the main panel on the roof.
Cold water at the bottom of the solar storage tank is pumped through the heat exchange unit, is heated, and is dropped back onto the top of the tank. On a sunny day, this can become quite hot.
The solar-heated water in the solar storage tank then becomes the input into a regular electric water heater, in my case a 40-gallon tank (on the left). Because the water is much hotter going into the tank than it would be if it were coming straight from the street, the electric heater doesn’t have to operate as much. That’s where the energy savings come in.
We’re still learning how the system performs. On sunny days, you can hear the motor spinning away, but even on overcast days there’s a significant amount of solar heating going on– the motor just spins a little more slowly.
In both tanks, the hottest water is at the top of the tanks. This is quite interesting, as I discovered one day when the electricity went out completely. As I began to run the shower, the coldish water from top of the (turned off) electric tank was drawn off, but was replaced by the very hot water from the top of the solar storage tank, and then that began running through the shower—my shower was as hot as ever.
Obviously, we’re still using electricity, just not as much. It’s too early to tell exactly how much money we’re saving, but I suspect the highest savings will come in the winter months, when the water coming into the house is at its coldest.
I’m quite happy with the Thermo Dynamic system, and Jim and Nick Allen at Doctor Solar could not be more helpful. They were a joy to work with, and I recommend them. They accomplished the work in two afternoons.
The only real drawback to the system is I’m overly excited about it. I wish I could more closely monitor it, and so some thermostats on the tanks would be helpful, and an electric meter. But that’s just me being geeky.
As for costs, my situation is a bit atypical, in that we also switched from a leased water tank to owning it outright with the new system, so we had to buy two, not just one, tank, along with the rest of the system. But, the entire set-up cost $7,200, including (as I recall) about $600 for the tanks. We’ll get a federal and Nova Scotia Power rebate, bringing the cost down to about $5,000, but we still have to go through the hassles of an energy assessment and filing the paperwork. The fact that the city is proposing to bring all those bureaucratic hassles under its purview is the most attractive part of MacLellan’s suggestion, in my opinion.
Still, we figure the system will pay for itself in somewhere between seven and 10 years. We’re using less energy, and have hot water when the power goes out. I really can’t see a downside.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2010.
It is fine to have hot water when the power goes out, but what about heating your whole house with hot water. How does the water get circulated through the house with no power? How do zone valves get turned on and off?
I have hot water when the power goes out… for all of 10 minutes of usage, in most cases. It’s enough to do dishes.
That said, this is an interesting prospect, but there are still downsides to basic, entry-level consumer solar power, even to just heat your water. 7 to 10 years is optimistic, and only a reality if you pay those costs with cash. Credit (either revolving or installment) is really the only way that an average family would be even able to afford anything north of 4 or 5 K, even with the city soaking up some of the costs. Depending how it’s done, this could take any number of years (but most certainly greater than 7 to 10) years to pay it off, especially if this is part of a larger renovation and is rolled into one’s mortgage. In that case, you wont see a full 100% ROI for 20 years at least, and that’s not taking into account any maintenance costs.
You want a true “Solar City”? We need to get rid of NSP’s archaic billing schemes, and allow customers to sell green energy back into the grid, which gives people incentive to go with a green setup. This would cut the time frame for the ROI of a bevy of solar panels in half (rough estimate; in the end it would depend on how the credits are applied, etc). This would alleviate some of the fears that solar power has poor ROI potential. The biggest gainers would be large consumers, apartment buildings, offices and the like. To these property owners, ROI is a big deal. Incentive that, and you’ll see significant decreases in electricity usage, not just in hot water usage.
Right now, NSP has this province in a death grip, at least in terms of ideas around renewable energy. I’m sure if it were up to them, we’d be stuck under a cloud of coal dust for the next 100 years. But that keeps them and their buddies at the Utilities Review Board in money, so nothing changes.
But it might hurt the view from citadel hill! And what if the panels are big and scary? Tall things are scary to us small town folk you know.
Interesting picture. I can see at least 2 violations of CSA F383 (Installation of Solar Domestic Hot Water Systems). There appears to be no insulation installed on the thermosyphon loop on the water side of the SolarBoiler, not to mention that it is a PEX line and should be copper. There also appears to be no “Anti-scald” valve installed to limit the temperature of the hot water out to your taps. This can result in scalding hot water coming in to your bathroom and kitchen sinks. Hope you don’t have kids.
If Halifax is indeed going to implement their “Solar City” plan, it is critical that there is an inspection process and contractors are held accountable for under-performing and poorly installed systems. Consumer mentality of always taking the lowest price without educating themselves about installation standards, combined with the fact that this a virtually unregulated and uninspected industry leads to many systems being poorly installed with paybacks of 15 to 20 years, if ever.
There are alot of pirates in this business……..Yarrr.
Another green fantasy.
Its a good initiative. But we need to go further. Though Halifax doesn’t have the best conditions for active solar in Canada we do for passive solar (combination of sun and ambient temperature). We’ve built houses here that throughout the winter are almost totally heated by passive solar. Our builders have yet to catch on that they could do the same for multi residential unit or office buildings. Such buildings, according to Dalhousie’s Larry Hughes, are possible here if their heights are limited to 5/6 floors.
Passive solar doesn’t require panels on the roof (though these are generally added for hot water), but it does require good insulation and windows, interior materials that will retain heat when the sun shines on them through the windows, a system for circulating it, and above all, good siting. That can be the more difficult challenge. That requires thinking collectively about gaining potential from passive solar when laying out streets, when establishing set backs, when establishing height limits. No point in building to maximize solar gain if the next building up is a high rise that cuts off access to the sun for much of the day!
Halifax’s climate is similar to that of Freiburg, Germany, solar capital of Europe. See http://www.solarregion.freiburg.de/solarre…. There they incorporate thinking about capturing potential solar gain into all planning and building. We have a long way to catch up to Frieburg, but at least it is there as a model for us.
I thought about solar hot water heating and got an estimate on it. It seems to me a better idea to just go off the grid with solar. It’s more expensive, but if you live with electric heating, it makes sense. I’d like to see a programme to help us completely solarize our homes and allow us to sell back excess energy to the monopoly. The estimate I got for a complete system was in the neighbourhood of $23,000 which would be worth it if the government helped us out in some way with rebates etc. Having said that, I’m glad to see the city at least starting with a solar hot water project. That could really help a lot of families right now. I suspect the news of an NDP backbench committee is making up for the province’s myopia regarding solar households. Maybe they’re afraid Emera will lose money !
This is a great Idea and this type of programm is used in other countries with great success. My only concern is that, in the end the home owner will pay for the system so the city of Halifax best not dictate what brand of system they put in their homes. The only thing that the Government should dictate is that it have all the proper certification example CSA or ULC and that installers have all the qualifications and insurance? The NRCAN website already list which systems qualify for their programms so why reinvente the wheel they are tested and safe? If not it may look like using tax dollars and giving it to one or two companies? This seems to be the direction that the city is trying to push things after attending a few meetings. I beleive pricing will take care of itself as long as government stays clear of this area or pricing will balloon as it always does with a monopoly. You can’t have Government making these types of dicisions. They should set the ground rules arrange the financing(limit the amount that can be applied to tax bill) and then it will be successful. As far as Government negotiating pricing? I beleive home owner and essentially the one who will be paying for it through their personal property tax can do a better job than Government and do not want to be forced into purchasing what the city deems as being the best technology? Their are also liabilities that the city would be taking if they tell the home owner which system to purchase( example company that they chose goes out of business? Who will service? How would they get parts?). This will add liability on the city not the home owner. If the Home Owner chooses his own system than he is responsible for those choices?Both Flate Plate and Evacuated tubes are great technologies they both have their strenghts and weaknesses the application or the install will determine which one is best for the home owner. Every Install is different you can’t use a cookie cutter model?
I don’t heat my supper all day long so it is hot when I come home, nor do I now do so with my hot water.
When my expensive elephantine 40 GALLON hot water heater blew, I investigated an electric tankless hot water heater that heats the water on demand, that is only when needed. I found a BOSCH Powerstar AE12 that fills the hot water needs of my wife and I perfectly. I have been using it for about three years now and am so happy that I am no longer heating and reheating water all day that I never used. I estimate my savings to be about 50% per year over the old wasteful heat it and store it system.
This entire setup did not cost anything near the $7,200 mentioned in the article. As far as sustainability, the first question I would ask is how long are those big fat water tanks going to last and how much to haul them to the landfill which has its own gargantuan costs.