Reduce Home Use by Installing Home PV and Wind Generation – 8th Entry into the Wild Energy Challenge – Please Cast Your Vote
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Reduce Home Use by Installing Home PV and Wind Generation – by Tim Bishop
The largest electricity users nationally are residential homes [34% of all electricity use], and commercial uses [25%].
REDUCE HOME USE BY INSTALLING HOME PV AND WIND GENERATION
To reduce electricity use in the home, encourage homeowners and small communities to invest in their own (grid-tied) generation, such as PV, small wind, or micro hydro. While technically less efficient than large-scale generation, the close connection between generation and end-use encourages conservative use. When generating their own electricity, people will naturally try to reduce their own energy use to match.
Energy retailers could aggregate and report in real time the energy generated and energy consumed by single households, neighbourhoods and facebook groupings of friends and whanau.
REPLACE HEAT PUMPS WITH EFFICIENT BIO-MASS HEATING
Heat pumps have a lifetime of 10-15 years, with some of the first already half way through their life. As heat pumps reach retirement, encourage their replacement with more efficient, clean burning wood burners and wetbacks that meet clean air standards.
Heat pumps added 140MW of load in 2007, when 79,000 of them were installed, according to a report by Nigel Isaacs of BRANZ. This in a year when the total increased load needed was 150 – 200 MW. [Solar Action Bulleting No. 85]
Additionally, low-pressure hot water systems should be encouraged, as they encourage conservative use of hot water, are more simply plumbed, and more easily support the uncomplicated addition of solar and wetback systems.
Kind regards,
Tim Bishop
021 705 346
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Tags: green energy design
You say: “…encourage homeowners and small communities to invest in their own (grid-tied) generation, such as PV, small wind, or micro hydro…”
But you should remember: “You will never get more energy than consume to produce PV, small wind, micro hydro”.
In other words, your CO2 footprint is bigger than you hope to save.
peace … miro novak
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