Unlike many solar companies who are only interested in quickly installing some panels on your roof and moving on to the next job we try to take the time to see what range of renewable solutions can work best for your specific needs, from improved heating and cooling to smart lighting solutions that reduce energy costs and improve aesthetics, plus we also install solar just like they do (if not better we like to think).
The reason we start with your needs is simple, the four largest consumers of electricity in a residential home are in order 1) Heating & Air Conditioning 2) Hot water 3) Cooking 4) Lighting
These four items are some of the most essential to modern life, in fact, most people cannot imagine day-to-day life without them, the flick of a switch brings into motion an array of visible and invisible servants day or night, however, the current way we power and access these services are both expensive and carbon-intensive, but it doesn’t have to be that way. See each of the sections below for how modern tech and engineering is re-shaping the way we do everything while providing better comfort, lower cost, and a drastically smaller carbon footprint.
Thanks to amazing advances in heat pump technology coming from the Asian and European markets (both ground and air-source) you can now have extremely efficient air conditioning and 300-400% efficient heating (most furnaces are only 80-90%) all in the same small unit, this means better comfort and decreased cost, as well as fewer fossil fuels consumed (be it natural gas, propane, or fuel oil).
Heat pumps work much like a reversed air conditioner, but instead of dumping heat from inside to outside, they take heat from outdoor air (down to -14F for air source) and move it into your home to provide space heating. Since they are moving existing heat rather than making it by burning fuels, they can have efficiencies that approach 300-400%, this means that every 1kW of electricity used produces 3kW of heating.
In the early 2000s solar thermal was a booming industry that offered relatively low-cost water heating for domestic hot water or hydronic heating systems, it was popular because it didn't require any major wiring (but a lot of plumbing) and was lower cost than PV at the time, which cost $4/Watt then, but times have changed.
Now thanks to the fact that PV panels are as low as 50c/Watt and running wire is a lot easier than soldering copper pipe from rooftop collectors to basement storage tanks, solar thermal has been waning in popularity and in its place either direct resistance solar water heating or heat pump water heaters. In either case, you take the high-grade electrical energy from a solar array and use it to heat water, most commonly for domestic use. Thanks to the low cost of solar and major improvements in the performance and efficiency of heat pump technology there is almost no reason to burn expensive fuels to get hot water, in fact, with some heat pump systems hot water is an extra bonus of the unit. You can also integrate heat pump technology with existing solar thermal to boost efficiency and improve hot water production on winter days.
The easiest power saving measure you can take is switching your lighting method (which is roughly the 4th largest electricity consumer, following HVAC and hot water). Like most people you probably have quite a few light fixtures in your house of various sizes and packages, thankfully almost every fixture can be converted to LED, no matter how unique the bulb or style. These bulbs are remarkable in that they can produce the same amount of light as a 60W incandescent using only 9-10W of power, all with the same pleasing warm, dimmable light you've become accustomed to.
Traditionally, battery storage for solar systems was reserved for extreme off-grid situations where utility power was too costly or impractical to bring in. If this option was chosen it was likely using lead-acid batteries, which are bulky and expensive.
That situation has changed dramatically in recent years thanks to hybrid and electric vehicle batteries being made in large quantities at ever dropping prices (economies of scale in action), this golden age is enabling new kinds of solar systems that wouldn’t have been possible only 5-10 years ago.
