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Official Foot Dragging On Energy Savings
by Alex Mendelsohn
With the price of home heating oil climbing, and my contribution to global warming not in doubt, it's clear the time has come to augment my home's oil-fired furnace and woodstove. To get the ball rolling, I gathered brochures from vendors displaying their wares at a local home energy expo here in Maine.
Next, I paid due diligence, searching the Web for more information. Before too long, I had a fair understanding of many turnkey OEM technologies, as well as the limitations and benefits of a number of popular solar collection products, such as collector panels, heat exchangers, and liquid pumps.
The average oil-burning furnace in New England needs to deliver 50,000 to 100,000 BTUs every hour to heat a typical home. Fortunately, my Jotul woodstove typically puts out about 45,000 BTUs an hour, which is more than adequate for my Cape Cod dwelling.
On the other hand, a well-designed solar collector can deliver only about 20,000 to 40,000 BTUs a day. Understanding that a gallon of home heating oil can yield about 144,000 BTUs, and considering the price of #2 heating oil, I decided to go ahead and see about installing a solar collector.
The components that caught my eye are made by US-based Thermomax, Eos (a Maine company), and Sunda, a Chinese outfit. All three companies make collectors based on heat pipes.
 As assemblages of tempered glass pipes, all of these heat-pipe systems employ valves that shut down the tube’s thermal cycling when temperatures reach 130ºC, thus protecting system components from overheating. According to the literature, these solar systems are more efficient than earlier generation flat-plate collectors. In addition to being unaffected by ambient temperatures, they're highly absorbent, so they work fairly well on cloudy and overcast days as well. I am impressed.
Our State's solar incentive plan, dubbed the Maine State Solar Incentive Program, helped woo the crowd gathered around the Thermomax display at the local energy show. Offering solar energy rebates, the initiative was signed into law in 2005. The Maine Public Utilities Commission governs its implementation.
The way it works is that any solar thermal system that’s designed to heat water and air can qualify for a basic rebate of 30% of the cost of the system, or $2500, whichever is less. Solar incentives for Energy Star and Maine Home Performance Homes are set at 35% of the cost of the system, or $3,000, whichever is less. A commercial incentive is 35% of system costs, or $10,500, whichever is less.
All well and good. Now comes the reality sandwich. As the state's Web site now reveals, funds have all been allocated for 2008. The well is dry.
By statute, the Solar Incentive Program is set to continue until December of 2010, and the incentive program will be refunded in 2009 (and reconfigured to include an allocation of 20% of funding to support a wind technology incentive), but at the moment I wouldn't be able to avail myself of this substantial savings.
Anticipating that I'd probably be able to eventually get the rebate, I called the Thermomax dealer I met at his booth at the show. Sure, he said, we'd be happy to come over to your place and give you an estimate. That was over a month ago. He never showed up. Business must be really good. I suppose he doesn't need any more customers, and he doesn’t want to expand his company.
On to the next vendor, a local oil burner service outfit that advertises in our town newspaper. The gentleman who stopped by explained what he would install, but indicated that there would be no rebate from the state. Moreover, the State demanded that licensed and approved installers do solar heating installations, and he was still in the process of getting his certification. Hmm. This was beginning to look a bit iffy, too. What's more, he left me with no brochures, no proposals or estimates (other than a flat-rate verbal pitch), nor any literature to peruse.
Next up is solar vendor number three, a shop right here in my hometown, replete with a walk-in retail showroom. The sales person requested that I e-mail some JPEG photos of my furnace and possible site for the solar collectors, which I did. Days went by. No response – even after I was told the engineer/owner would visit my home to perform an on-site evaluation.
Why in blazes are these vendors unresponsive? Are they not interested in growing their businesses? Vendor three stated that the State law’s lack of funding was "killing his business, because people are waiting for the program to be re-funded, and they’re not buying my installations."
Is he asleep? Is my state's legislature asleep? For its part, is the US Congress so moribund that it cannot pass emergency legislation for alternate energy tax credits, refunds, and the like? Thanks to constant partisan bickering, legislators in Washington seem unable to craft and pass appropriate resolutions. In a ceaseless effort to thwart the other side’s proposals, alternative energy program funding is essentially quashed.
We're in energy’s 11th hour. How much more foot dragging will it take before people get serious? What are your thoughts about energy and alternatives? Write me at amm at en-genius dot net, or post your comments below on our blog.
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