Two gifts from Sol (Goddess of the sun)
Harvesting grapes, and harvesting the sun.
Words cannot describe the feeling of generating power for your home and car simply from the suns rays. It is a gift from god that man can harvest the energy of the sun. It will be a gift to us all, if we fully comprehend the importance and implement this gift.
It's so damn simple.
Herons House was designed as a green building from the very first thought. For such a large home with an occupied guest wing, our SDG&E bills of $450 a month were modest and on the low end for comparable estate homes with similar bells and whistles.
So lets talk savings below that benchmark. We'll get to solar in a minute. The single most energy saving thing that you can do in your home (far cheaper than a solar P.V. system) is to change out your light bulbs to CFL (compact fluorescent lighting) bulbs. You can find good non dimmable cfls at your hardware store, Here is a link for dimmable cfl's http://www.1000bulbs.com/Small-Dimmable-Fluorescents/
In our case we have over 250 light bulbs in the home. We have changed 150 of our 250 lights to CFL light bulbs with approximately 100 of those on dimmer circuits. I have about 30 more I want to change out with the rest remaining halogen. The reason for the remaining halogen, is there is not a current cfl bulb that will fit the applications in these fixtures.
First, discard any past history or thoughts on florescent lighting. Yes they used to flicker, yes they used to take forever to warm up, they used to buzz, and the light was like a bright white or blue. The new technology is amazing.
The lights are 90% of there brightness right away. You can get warm tones from 2350k all the way to the whiteness of 5000k. The cfl dimmables are amazing and work just like halogen bulbs. There is no degradation in aesthetics from the fixture or from the light emitted by the fixture. A standard sixty watt bulb is replace by an equivalent cfl that uses 14 watts.
The end result for us, The cfls cost us around $800. We save approximately $120 a month on our SDG&E bill. That's a pay back time of six months for bulbs that will last ten times longer than standard incandescent. The savings in our application will be greater than most most because of the huge number of fixtures per room in our home.
Next is solar. Our solar generation facility is producing 500kw of electricity every month. That 500kw is removed from the most expensive tier of the rates, 26 cents per KWH, and represents a savings of $130 a month in winter and $160 a month in summer.
The Future
Julie and I will continue with many small energy saving steps (such as turning your printer off and putting your home computers on a sleep mode when not used and developing financial incentives for your children to be energy misers!) We will also install a smaller phase two deployment of solar in 2008 or 2009. When finished, Herons House will be a net zero user of energy.
Incredible.
We anticipate a total savings of $300 to $325 per month with a usage of around 450Kw. In the summer months we might even be a net generator and have no electric bill.
This is the installed cfls, the ones over the cooking area are 14 watts equivalent to a 60 watt bulb, the hallway lights are 8 watt, equivalent to a 45watt bulb. As you can see just in the kitchen we have 14 bulbs.
They are identical at an A19 bulb and fit perfectly recessed into the 4" can fixture.
Equal to a 45 watt incandescent bulb.