My wife and I are looking into some “green” energy options for our home. Is there a definitive “best” option as far as payback period, real impact on reducing traditional energy usage, etc? Some options we’re consider so far are geothermal heating/cooling and solar water heating. Solar electric sounds great, but from what I understand the efficiencies aren’t quite there yet.
We live in a ~2500 sq ft two story home with an unfinished basement in Maryland. Our house faces south and I don’t want to put solar panels on that side of the house. However, we do have several acres of generally clear area.
My thought is to call up your utility companies and see if any of them will give you a home energy audit. They’re usually free, and will typically give you a list of improvements you could do, including cost and energy/$ savings for each one. Sometimes, the utility company has a program to subsidize the project, too. [The audit might not consider major projects like adding solar panels].
Generally, insulating and related things like weatherstripping doors, etc. give the best bang for the buck, but if you can get an audit, you’ll get specific advice about your house.
Increasing wall and roof insulation is definitely the cheapest, easiest and most effective addition to a dwelling, in terms of saving energy. Although this will depend on where you live and the local climate, as the savings will be associated with the requirement to burn less fossil fuels in your heating system. If you have a short heating period per year, then this may not be quite as effective for you as it would be for others in colder climes.
Solar water heating is generally a good thing, but the payback time for a retro-fit may be considerable (12-15 years) unless you have an unusually large family or massive hot water usage. This is an extremely cost-effective option in new-build homes though.
The best ‘bang for the buck’ steps increase efficiency.
The absolute best is sealing your house: caulking, weatherstripping, closing all those little holes that let in drafts. (You’ll need to plan a deliberate ventilation mechanism to get the needed air changes in your house after you seal it, though; but then you can add things like an air-to-air heat exchanger.) This reduces the amount of air you need to heat or cool.
The next best is insulation. This reduces the heat loss or gain of your house.
The next best is adding thermal mass inside your insulation. This provides storage for your heat or coolness, and once it’s at your desired room temperature, it slows the rate of change of your internal temperature as conditions change. Thermal mass can be more difficult to retrofit depending on how your house is constructed.
Now that you’ve reduced demand, you can look at source efficiencies. I’ve heard good things about geothermal, but it is expensive.
The top two items from our energy audit were exterior insulation and heat pump. The Canadian government has an energy program that will pay roughly 40% of the heat pump so that’s an easy decision here. Definitely check with your utility to see about an audit. It was well worth it for us.
Once you get beyond insulation, the single best Green investment is Solar DHW. But, you need a collector, so if you don’t want to put anything on the roof, you are SOL (not SOLar).
I’m not about to go veggie, but we do have a 300 sq ft vegetable garden and we buy as much of our remaining groceries, meat included, as locally as possible. I’m hoping to expand the garden this year but there’s still plenty of room out there in the yard to one day build my massive James Bond villain solar array.
For the benefit of others who may come in to read this thread, anyone considering solar power may want to do some research into what is offered in their particular area. In many cases there are state or local incentives that can make solar cheaper or at least competitive to the local power utility in the long run.
Unfortunately for the OP, I don’t believe Maryland has anything like this right now.
Also note that many places don’t allow you to stick solar panels up anywhere you’d like as they are considered an eyesore. They make “solar shingles” which go on your roof and look a lot like regular shingles just for folks in these sorts of areas.
One that nobody else has mentioned yet is clotheslines. A drier uses a lot of energy, and a piece of rope is almost free. Plus, if you put some clotheslines up in the basement for use in winter, the drying clothes will also help you humidify your house.