Friends helping us celebrate Earth Day 2016 at the Greeny Flat
Sunday April 22nd marks the end of our fourth year of energy-positive-living in the Greeny Flat. It also happens to be the 48th annual, international celebration of Earth Day which, this year, is focused on ending plastic pollution.
So, in what has quickly become our tradition, we will be holding our 4th annual Earth Day Party on Sunday April 22nd from 4 to 7pm at the Greeny Flat, 16a Queen St, Mittagong.
More good friends celebrating Earth Day 2016
Everyone is welcome… as usual we will be cooking pizzas so feel free to bring your favourite pizza ingredient, something to drink and perhaps a little finger food to share (but not any plastic please). Cintia and I hope to see you here to help us celebrate our wonderful house and fine community of friends.
Our famous Earth Day Pizzas!
Shameless Self Promotion
Speaking of Cintia and I… we would also like to invite you to an art exhibition which will include some of our work. As you may know, Cintia is a ceramicist who works at the Sturt Pottery Centre. She and nine of her fellow potters will be having their regular Celebrating Clay exhibition next week at the BDAS Gallery in Bowral (not at Sturt) and they’ve invited me to include some photographs. Here’s a bit from their promotional email.
10 ceramic artists, 10 different expressions of this versatile material called clay: from functional ware to sculptures and everything in between.
Come and join us in Celebrating Clay 2018, an exhibition by Sturt Pottery Group.
Also on the walls see a beautiful photograph exhibition of Southern Highlands local life by Andy Lemann.
From 12th -17th April 2018 at Bowral Art Gallery (BDAS – 1 Short St, Bowral). 10am-4pm.
This looks like it’s going to be a wonderful conference and exhibition of solar and smart energy solutions to be held next week at the International Conference Centre in Darling Harbour. I plan to go on Wednesday… perhaps I’ll see you there. Here’s some information from their website.
Welcome to the home of Australia’s biggest solar, storage and smart energy conference and exhibition.
Powered by the Smart Energy Council – incorporating the Australian Solar Council and Energy Storage Council, this is our 56th annual FREE-TO-ATTEND conference and exhibition.
The show is the complete smart energy package whereby both industry delegates can expect valuable insights, leading innovation, best practice and information from over 100 exhibitors and 90 presenters.
In 2018, we have introduced the Energy Revolution area catering to consumers who want to slash their power bill – click here for more information.
TOP REASONS TO ATTEND
Over 6,000 delegates, 100 exhibitors and 90 presenters
A showcase of the latest technology, demonstration of new business models and innovation
Earlier this week I was asked to write a brief (300 word) article about solar for today’s local paper. If you’re interested you can access the article here… But I can save you the trouble…. because this is what I wrote.
When I look around the Southern Highlands I see a lot of buildings that still don’t have solar panels on their roof. The question I want to ask the owners is, “What are you waiting for?” With recent increases in both electricity rates and Feed-in Tariffs (FIT is the amount you get paid for any excess solar power you send out to the grid) the financial benefit of going solar has never been better.
I buy my electricity from a small, ethical retailer called Energy Locals and I pay 22c/kWh for the power I import and I get 13c/kWh for the excess solar I export. At those prices, if you were to install a 5kW solar system costing $7500 you would get a return on your investment of between 12% and 21%. The more of your own solar power you can use during the day, the better your return on investment will be. But even if you export every bit of your solar power to the grid you will still make 12% on your investment, plus you’ll be adding to the market value of your property and doing something positive for the environment. You won’t get that from a bank!
If you’re the owner of a small to medium-sized business, the returns can be even better. If you’re a landlord, there are systems you can access through organisations like Matter or SunTenants that allow both you and your tenants to share the benefits of solar power.
So, if you’ve own a roof, it’s time to think about putting it to work for you by installing solar panels. And if you already have a solar system, it’s a good time to look at adding more.
Honestly, you’re crazy if you don’t have a solar system on your roof when you can get such a good return on your investment (ROI). And, since writing that piece earlier in the week, I’ve received another quote for a solar system for the house next to the Greeny Flat. Initially they told me $7,500 for a 5kW system but it turns out that was for the most expensive, top-of-the-line equipment. The price for good quality gear (i.e. Trina panels and an SMA inverter like we have on the Greeny Flat) is only $5,500 for a 5kW system.
At that price the ROI is even better than I quoted in the article. In our area a solar system will produce about 4kWh per day for each 1kW of installed solar. So a 5kW system should produce an average of 20kWh per day. That makes 7,300kWh/year. If you were to export every bit of that power to the grid and get 12c/kWh for it, you would receive a total of $867 per year which equates to a 16% return on a $5,500 investment. On the other hand, if you were able to use every kWh yourself (which many small businesses can do because they use power during the day) you would be avoiding paying 22c/kWh so you would be saving $1,606/yr which equals a 29% ROI.
With banks paying about 2% interest on a savings account and even the best companies on the ASX only paying dividends in the 5-7% range, you just can’t get the sort of ROI you can get from solar from anything but the most risky financial investment. And solar is not risky at all. It’s securely fastened to your own roof where you can keep an eye on it and it’s covered by long warranties plus your building insurance (as long as you inform your insurer that you have installed it).
Recent Happy Solar Customers
Jim and Jess beside their new solar inverter
Jess and Jim of Bundanoon have recently had a 10kW solar PV system installed on their Western roof, and are happy to report that at most times of the day, the system is generating plenty of power to cover their household consumption needs and surplus export to the grid (earning them a feed-in tariff of 12.8c per kW/h via Energy Locals). Due to export limiting, some of this surplus will be wasted, especially during the warmer months, and so Jim plans to monitor their usage patterns over the next 12 months and decide whether battery storage might be required. Jess and Jim were very happy with the professionalism of the Nowra and Bowral-based installers, Simmark, and they reported that Matt Simms, in particular, was a great source of technical and practical advice.
I need to get something off my chest… it’s been bothering me for YEARS and I’ve finally had enough. I’m talking about tradesmen who go up into an attic, move the insulation out of the way to get to what they need to work on, do their work and then leave.
Can you spot the tell-tale signs that there’s been a tradie in this attic?
I took the above photo last year when I was doing an energy assessment on a house in Bundanoon and this is absolutely typical. Obviously an electrician has been up there to install the light (on the right-hand -side) and the bathroom exhaust fan (on the left-hand-side). As usual they’ve moved the insulation out of the way to get to the locations they needed and to access the wiring. They’ve done their thing and then they haven’t put the insulation back. (While I’m at it I might also point out that they’ve installed the bathroom fan in such a way that the outlet is pointing directly into the insulation. This means that all the warm humid air from the shower is blowing straight into one fibreglass batt… how long do you think it will be before that batt is saturated and mould starts to grow?… but that’s another rant.)
I wouldn’t mind so much if this was an unusual occurrence but this is an epidemic!
I’ve been in the building game for thirty years and for the last twenty I’ve been focused primarily on energy efficiency. I’ve done energy audits and assessments on hundreds of houses both in Australia and the US. And I can honestly say that I have seen this sort of thing in EVERY attic I’ve ever been in (except for the ones that had no insulation at all… and there are a surprising lot of those too!).
I’m perfectly serious… in every attic I’ve inspected I’ve found evidence that some tradesman (could be an electrician, a heating and cooling installer, a plumber, a cable TV guy, a solar installer, a roofer, a pest inspector… pretty much anyone who goes into attics) has moved the insulation and not put it back.
I’ve had enough! This has got to stop! Australian insulation jobs are generally not very good in the first place with gaps, cracks, folds and voids appearing all over the place (see our Newsletter from back in March 2016 for a whole other rant on that subject). The last thing we need is tradesmen (who really should know better) stuffing things up even more.
This attic in Epping was typically poorly insulated BEFORE the electrician got to it… now look at it!
Why do tradesmen not care about insulation?
I think it’s a symptom of poor training and a fragmented industry. Each tradesman is taught to know and care (if you’re lucky) about their own little link in the building chain and nothing else. Electricians know all about electrical codes and fire safety and circuit loads but they don’t know anything (and aren’t taught to care about) any other aspect of the building process. Likewise a plumber cares about plumbing, a roofer cares about roofing, and none of them give a hoot about what the other guy is doing. Insulation and energy efficiency are never seen as important. In fact they’re seen as unnecessary impediments to a quick and profitable turnaround. On most Australian building sites the job of installing the fibreglass batts (which, by the way, are not a very good way to insulate a building in the first place) is given to the least knowledgeable and most inexperienced person on the site. They’re given very little instruction on how to do it and told to get it done as quickly as possible. It’s seen as brainless and simple work to stuff a few batts into a few cavities and beside… no-one inspects it so WHO CARES!.
The truth is that doing a good job of insulating a wall or a ceiling (or particularly a floor… I ought to know because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks) requires experience, thought and care. Each piece has to be cut precisely to fit its space and installed so that it completely fills the cavity from front to back. It shouldn’t be folded or stuffed or squashed and there shouldn’t be any gaps, cracks or voids around the edges or between the batts. And most importantly it shouldn’t have some bozo tradie rip it out, toss it across the attic and not put it back when he’s finished.
This photo shows what a good insulation job should look like (ignore the gaps beside the old window because we’re about to take it out and replace it with a new, double-glazed one).
So how can you prevent tradies from stuffing up your attic insulation?
I suggest that any time you are considering hiring a tradesman to do ANY kind of work in your attic you send them an email (so you have it in writing) that says, ‘The insulation in my attic is very important to me and I need it to be kept in good condition. If your work requires you to move any insulation for any reason, I expect it to be put back the way you found it. After your job is finished (and before I pay you) I will be inspecting the attic to make sure the insulation is in perfect condition. If it isn’t I will expect you to come back and fix it or I will hire a specialist to do it and deduct the cost from your final payment. Thanks for being careful’. That should keep the bastards honest.
Here endeth the lesson.
On a Happier Note – Cheap, 3D Printed EV
The 3D printed LSEV from China
I’ve been saying for quite a while that we need small, simple, affordable electric vehicles and they’ll probably be coming from China or India. Western car manufacturers seem irrevocably obsessed with making cars bigger, fancier, faster and more complex. I think they’re going to miss out on the lions share of the future car market because what people really need is something like this.
It’s the LSEV and it’s the love child of a Chinese 3D printing company and an Italian EV designer. As reported in this New Atlas article…
According to Polymaker, all visible parts of the car except the chassis, seats and glass are 3D-printed. Taking this approach reportedly allowed the total number of separate parts to be reduced from a typical 2,000 to only 57 – that presumably doesn’t include things like the drivetrain. It also made possible a claimed complete vehicle weight of just 450 kg (992 lb)…
We’ve reached out to Polymaker for more details on the vehicle, and are still waiting to hear back. In a recent report from CNBC, however, it was stated that the car will be priced at approximately US$7,500, have a top speed of about 43 mph (69 km/h), and a battery range of 93 miles (150 km) per charge.
Cintia and I are pretty happy with our PHEV as a work vehicle and for longer trips, camping, etc. but this little beauty would be perfect for us as a second car for running around town. Of course it probably won’t be offered for sale in Australia but we live in hope.
A while ago I was asked by a friend who had just bought a block of land in the prestigious ‘Retford Park’ subdivision in Bowral, to help him design an energy efficient home to build on the property. I was dismayed and disgusted to discover that the ‘Design Guidelines’ for this subdivision actually made it impossible to build a good Passive Solar house or even to have an effective solar power system in many cases. One of the guidelines stated that ‘solar panels could not be visible from the street’. So, if you bought a block with the street to the north you would have to put the solar panels on the south side of the roof which really doesn’t work too well. Another ‘guideline’ stated that there had to be a verandah at least 2.7m wide along at least 50% of the street side of the house. This means that, if the street is to the north, the verandah would block at least half of your winter sun. Yet another one stated that the living area of the house had to ‘address the street’. In other words, if the street was to the south, you would have to put the living area on the south side of the house which goes against one of the basic principles of Passive Solar Design which is to have the rooms that you use during the day on the sunny side of the house where they can take advantage of the natural light and the warmth in winter from the sun streaming in. There were lots more of these ‘guidelines’ that, put together, made it impossible to build an effective Passive Solar and energy efficient house. After I explained all this to my friend he ended up selling his block and buying somewhere else.
Personally, I was outraged that the developer was allowed to impose these kinds of restrictions on the property owners. It seems to me that our local and state regulations should be preventing this from happening and should, in fact, be requiring people to build more energy efficient and sustainable homes. I mean, isn’t that what BASIX is for???
For those readers not from NSW, BASIX stands for ‘Building Sustainability Index’. It is compulsory for any new residential building in NSW to achieve a minimum score in order to pass BASIX before building approval will be granted. But, as I adamantly pointed out in our Newsletter way back in March 2014… BASIX IS A JOKE! You only have to look at the thousands of new homes springing up in awful subdivisions all up and down the east coast of NSW to find proof that BASIX is completely failing to make our homes more sustainable.
A typical new subdivision in NSW with massive houses built inches apart and covered with dark tile roofs. No open space, no thought given to solar access, or ventilation or orientation or energy efficiency. (Image source: 7News)
The most depressing thing for me about the photo above is that every home in that subdivision has passed BASIX and yet there isn’t a ‘sustainable’ thing about any of them. For the last couple of years I’ve been thinking that maybe I should try to get together with a developer to do a subdivision where all of the ‘Design Guidelines’ are aimed at requiring the owners to build Passive Solar and energy efficient homes.
Fast forward to today…. Cintia and I just got home from a very pleasant evening out which included a delicious desert at the Bowral Brasserie. We met and got to chatting with the owner, John Durst, and I was delighted to hear that he has actually developed his own subdivision called Khancoban Alpine Estate and written a set of Design Guidelines aimed at requiring all homes in the development to utilise Passive Solar Design principles and to preserve good solar access, not just to their own property but to their neighbour’s homes as well. John has even gone so far as to show charts towards the end of these Design Guidelines that demonstrate how the energy savings gained from building an energy efficient house can reduce the time required to pay off a mortgage by as much as 9 years!
I would like to congratulate John for taking the initiative to encourage more sustainable development in his estate. Khancoban is high up in the Alpine region of NSW so, by Australian standards, it has a pretty harsh climate where building an energy efficient home has the potential to make a huge difference to the comfort and costs associated with living there.
The tagline of the Khancoban Alpine Estate website is ‘Affordable Paradise’ and I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with the prices of the lots as well as the commitment to energy efficiency. As you can see from their pricelist, the available lots range from $39,500 up to $60,000 for between 555 and 1002 sqm. Considering that an equivalent sized property in our area would be priced anywhere from $400,000 to $800,000 their prices look very reasonable to me. I’m also impressed with the unwritten idea that ‘affordability’ means more than just the price of the property… it also means that the house on it should be built in such a way that it is energy efficient and cost effective to heat, cool, keep comfortable and to operate.
I would like to add that I have no affiliation with John or with Khancoban Alpine Estate. I just met him tonight and I’m impressed with what he’s trying to do. As far as I’m concerned every subdivision should be built to this sort of standard.
This week we completed the job of replacing the tile roof on the cottage next to the Greeny Flat with a light-coloured Colorbond roof. This will help to keep the house much cooler in the summer because:
The light colour will reflect heat much more effectively than the dark tiles;
The light weight of the metal will not hold heat like the heavy tiles did;
We added ‘Anti-con’ blanket (50mm fibreglass insulation over reflective foil sarking) directly under the corrugated metal so it will transfer very little heat into the attic;
We added plenty of eave vents plus a ‘whirly bird’ ventilator near the peak of the roof which will help to keep the attic cool in summer plus help to control moisture and condensation in the winter, and;
We were also able to put insulation into large areas of the ceiling that did not get insulated properly when the ceiling was done years ago. It is very difficult in most attics to install insulation right out to the edges where the roof meets the exterior walls so often (as in our case) this just gets left uninsulated (see photo below). In total there was probably 25sqm of uninsulated ceiling that has now been insulated to a very good standard. This will greatly help to keep the house cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
While we were at it we also added steel ‘triple grips’ to tie the roof rafters down to the top plates and steel strapping to tie the top-plates down to the wall framing. Without the enormous weight of the tiles to hold the roof down, these details will ensure that the whole roof doesn’t lift off in a big wind.
Some of the things we were able to do while the roof was off.
Time to Put Solar on the Roof???
As I have mentioned in our last two Newsletters (here and here), we are looking into the costs and benefits of putting solar on the roof of this rented house. This is a dilemma that affects every landlord and tenant due to what is known as the ‘split incentive’. The tenant could benefit from having solar on their roof but they have no incentive to install it when they don’t own the building. Meanwhile, the landlord owns the building but has no incentive to install solar because the tenant would get all the benefit in the form of lower electricity bills. See our previous Newsletters for more about this Australia-wide problem and some of the possible solutions.
There are organisations like SunTenants, Matter and PrePaid Solar that have been set up to try to resolve this issue but I don’t think any of them offer the perfect solution. For one thing, I’m not keen on paying a fourth party a lot of money to administer what should be a very simple transaction. Ideally I think every electricity retailer should be required to offer a service for landlords and tenants in order to simplify the arrangement. This would mean that there are just three parties involved, the landlord, the tenant and the retailer.
However, since that is not currently available (although I am planning to talk to my retailer (Energy Locals) about offering it) I’m thinking that the next best option will be for Mum to keep the electricity bill in her name and simply charge the tenant for the daily supply charges plus the grid power and solar power they use. She can set her own price for her solar power (although I understand that she cannot legally charge more than the retail price) and she can even offer the tenant a percentage of the FIT if she’s feeling generous. In order to try to understand the financial returns for her I have put together the following spreadsheet and I would greatly appreciate any feedback on it, especially if you happen to be an expert on solar and/or an accountant. (Please note that I am neither and I make no guarantees about the accuracy of the numbers presented below).
The idea is that the fields shaded green can be changed to test different scenarios and I have shown six such options below (scroll right to see more).
In this example I have used the approximate rates that I currently enjoy with Energy Locals along with estimates for things like the cost of the system, the amount of energy the tenants use, the percentage of solar they might self-consume, Mum’s tax rate, etc.
In the six different options shown I have simply tweaked one of the variables each time, e.g. Option 1 is for a 4kW system, Option 2 is for 5kw, Option 3 I changed the percentage of self consumption from 20% to 30%, then 4, 5 and 6 I just adjusted the amount Mum could charge or refund the tenant.
In all six cases that I tested, the simple Return On Investment (ROI) and Payback Periods seem very acceptable with paybacks ranging from 6 to 8 years (when you factor in depreciation). I recently realised that a landlord has the additional benefit (compared to a home owner) of being able to deduct the depreciation of the solar system from their taxable income. So I have attempted to factor that in at the end.
Setting this up would require agreement between the tenant and the landlord. It might also require a monitor to determine the amount of solar power the tenant has used (although I’m pretty sure this can be calculated from the total solar production (read from the inverter) minus the solar power exported (read from the export meter). If so, it would simply be a matter of reading the meters and inverter each quarter and calculating what the tenant owes. It might involve paying the Property Manager a small additional fee to do this and to request payment from the tenant.
The beauty of a system like this is that it can benefit both the landlord (by providing a good return on their investment) and the tenant (by lowering their electricity bills) plus it provides an incentive for the tenant to use more solar power and less grid power which is good for the planet.
Any comments about this idea will be more than welcome and can be made by filling out the ‘Leave a Reply’ field below.
Investment Opportunity 1 – Crowd-funded Solar Electricity Retailer
I have also just registered my interest in possibly investing in Australia’s first crowd-funded, solar-focused energy retailer. Called DC Power Co this is a startup venture that promises to…
‘…reward solar owners with cheaper bills, better feed-in tariffs, transparency around how your investment is actually working, genuine guidance on how to get more out of your solar and wholesale top-up prices for when you need a little extra from the grid.
And best of all … we’re inviting all Australian Solar Owners to join us in building the company by becoming shareholders.
A $50 investment will see you own a piece of DC Power Co., allow you to have a say in how the business is run, and offer a share in future profits.’
I have no affiliation with DC Power Co, I just think this sounds like a good idea and possibly a good investment opportunity but I don’t offer financial advice so please, do your own research.
Investment Opportunity 2 – Repower 6 Now Open for Investors
Some of the Repower crew in front of the community-funded solar system on the Milkwood Bakery in Berry.
If you’re not familiar with Repower you can read more about their system of using local investors to fund solar power systems for local businesses in this previous Newsletter. If you are familiar with them you might be interested to know that their sixth investment round is now open… but hurry, their previous five rounds got filled very quickly.
Yesterday we began the job of replacing the tile roof on the old cottage next to the Greeny Flat
For the last month I’ve been banging on about how inappropriate tile roofs are for Australia’s climate. So we’ve bitten the bullet and begun the process of replacing ours with a light-coloured Colorbond. As many of our readers will already know, the land the Greeny Flat is built on is owned by my mother as part of an investment property along with an old cottage built in about 1945. Over the last year we’ve been gradually doing a complete energy retrofit on the place. (You can click here if you want to read more about that process and watch a series of short videos we’ve made about the project).
To summarise… so far we’ve: removed all the fibro from the outside of the walls; insulated the exterior walls; replaced all the windows with double-glazing; upgraded the plumbing and electrical systems; reclad the outside with galvanised iron; installed a mini Trombe wall, a solar air heater, a high-efficiency reverse-cycle air-conditioner and a slow-combustion wood stove; replaced the sewer lines; added a covered deck and awning along the west side to provide summer shading, improved the access and ventilation to the sub-floor area; and insulated under all of the floor we can get to. It’s a good, solidly-built old place but, after seventy years, it needed an upgrade and we reckon it will be good for the next seventy by the time we’re finished. It will also be much more comfortable, better ventilated, healthier, easier to keep warm in winter and cool in summer plus more energy and water efficient.
For those of you who are following our series of little videos about the project, I apologise, I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately and I’m behind on posting to YouTube. However I intend to make three or four more videos to complete the Energy Retrofit story and I’ll let you know when they’re ready to view.
At some point in the future we also plan to remodel the kitchen and living room but those are not energy related modifications. All that we have left to do from the energy point of view after the new roof is on will be to add solar panels, which brings me back to the discussion I started last week about Solar For Landlords. The research I’ve done so far suggests that this is a major issue which is preventing about one in four Australian homes from having solar panels installed on their roof (because the home is rented, the landlord has to pay for the system and the tenant gets all the benefit… this is known as the ‘split incentive’). It’s also preventing most of Australia’s renters from having access to affordable and renewable energy from rooftop solar.
Given the size of the problem, it is not surprising that various enterprises have sprung up to try to offer a solution. So far the three main ones I’ve discovered are:
If any readers know of any other programs please let me know. The cottage next to the Greeny Flat is a perfect case study and I plan to contact each of the organisations that offer this type of service to find out what’s involved and how the numbers stack up.
For anyone interested, here are links to a few good articles I’ve uncovered on the subject:
The last of the three articles above points out that the return for a landlord investing in a solar system can be significantly higher than for a homeowner because the landlord can depreciate the expense. I’m wondering if the entire cost could be depreciated under the current $20,000 instant deduction for small businesses. If there are any accountants reading this, perhaps you could let me know…
It seems to me that the perfect solution would be for energy retailers (Powershop and Energy Locals) to offer this service. That way there would only be three parties involved in the energy agreement; the retailer, the landlord and the tenant. Unfortunately I’m not aware of any electricity retailers that offer this option but I intend to contact some to find out and, if they don’t, to suggest that they consider it.
There has to be a simple way for both the landlord and the tenant to share the benefits of rooftop solar. I’ll let you know when I find it.
Rooftop solar goes gangbusters in 2017. (Source: Domain)
It’s official, 2017 was a record-breaking year for rooftop solar installations in Australia in spite of our government’s desire to slow renewable energy development and prop up fossil fuel industries as long as possible. It’s no surprise really, given the fact that electricity prices across the nation went up dramatically last year AND solar feed-in-tarrifs (FIT’s) doubled. This means that the financial return on a rooftop solar investment is much better than having money in the bank or even paying down a mortgage. Depending on how much you pay for power, how much you get as a FIT and how much electricity you are able to use during the day directly from your solar system, the basic ROI for most solar home owners is somewhere between 10% and 20%. With banks paying about 2% interest on savings account it’s little wonder that record numbers of Australian homes are putting solar on their roofs.
In fact we recommend that people put as much solar as they can on their home (see our Sept 22 Newsletter for more on this). In most cases this is limited to about 6kW of solar on a 5kW inverter but if you have 3-phase power and lots of roof space it could be as much as three times the size. Even if you end up exporting most of the solar power directly to the grid, with a FIT of 12-13c/kWh you can still get a return in the range of 10-15%.
For small business owners who primarily use electricity during the day the ROI from rooftop solar can be as high as 25-30% meaning that the system will pay for itself in as little as 3-4 years. After that you’ve got many, many more years of free electricity to enjoy. Here’s a case study from Solar Quotes blog to back me up on this.
When you see those sorts of numbers you start to wonder why ANY home or business in Australia DOESN’T have solar on their roof. I think a lot of people have hesitated because they’re waiting for the ‘perfect time’ but meanwhile they’ve missed out on years of financial savings. Another one of the big reasons is that many people don’t own their own home or business premises.
Solar For Landlords
So what about rental properties? How can a landlord and/or a tenant get a financial benefit from putting solar on the roof of an investment property?
The fundamental problem for most landlords is that they own the property but the electricity bill is usually in the name of the tenant. This means that any financial benefit from rooftop solar in the form of reduced daytime electricity use or credit for electricity exported to the grid accrues to the tenant and not the landlord.
A perfect example of this is the house next to the Greeny Flat which we are currently upgrading for improved energy performance. (Click here for more information and videos on that whole process). This is an investment property owned by my mother. She plans to put solar on the roof but she’s not sure when to do it or how to achieve a financial return on that investment.
The simplest way for Mum to recoup the cost of installing a solar system would be to put the rent up. But it’s a competitive market and her tenants may not be prepared to pay extra for a house with solar, even though they will benefit from reduced electricity bills.
Another way to do it would be for Mum to put the electricity bill in her name and for the renters to pay for the power they use plus the daily supply charges. That way Mum would directly get the financial reward for the solar power produced. But it would also complicate the rental agreement because every three months Mum’s property manager would have to figure out how much electricity the renters had used and how much extra they owe. And then what happens if they disagree or refuse to pay? It could create a very sticky situation between Mum and her tenants.
One option that I have just thought of would be for Mum to install the solar on a completely separate meter and simply export all of the electricity to the grid. That way she would get a financial return from the roof space she owns which is currently doing nothing (apart from keeping her tenants dry). But it wouldn’t benefit the tenants at all and the ROI would be less because she’d have to pay a second lot of daily supply charges. Still, I think this is worth looking into along with various programs that have been set up specifically to manage the financial arrangements between tenants and landlords who have rooftop solar systems.
We are currently at the point with our Home Energy Retrofit where we are ready to replace the old tile roof with a new, light-coloured Colorbond roof. In fact that is due to happen next week (no doubt we will manage to break the drought in the process). Once the new roof is on we’ll be ready to seriously consider the Triple-Bottom-Line benefits of putting solar on the roof. I’ll be looking carefully into our options and reporting on the findings over the next few weeks. So stay tuned, especially if you are a landlord or tenant yourself.
Heat-Reflective Paint
Following our recent discussions about the benefits of using light-coloured roofs in a warm climate like Australia a reader sent me a link to the following YouTube video which briefly demonstrates the benefits of heat-reflective paint. Thanks Doug!
Other Things That Caught Our Eye Last Week
This NewAtlas article talks about how sea-level rise appears to be accelerating and may happen much faster than previously predicted. Not a happy thought but a good reminder of why it’s important to reduce our energy use as much, and as quickly, as possible
Pot Power
I won’t presume to know where any of our readers stand on the issue of legalising marijuana but the fact is this is happening at a rapid rate around the world. 10 out of the 50 US states could potentially legalise recreational use in 2018. Personally I don’t have a problem with people smoking dope but I’m starting to get a bit concerned about the climate change implications of increased growing of Cannabis. According to this article from The Guardian…
A study by scientist Evan Mills, with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, revealed that legalized indoor marijuana-growing operations account for 1% of total electricity use in the US…In 2012, Colorado became the first state to legalize recreational marijuana. Two years later, Denver’s 362 marijuana grow facilities consumed more than 2% of the city’s electricity usage. Statewide facilities are behind roughly half of Colorado’s new power demands.
With a whole lot more states set to follow Colorado’s lead in legalising the growing and smoking of pot this could turn into an energy consumption nightmare second only to the processing of Bitcoin transactions.
In last week’s Newsletter I wrote about some developments in Waste-to-Energy Systems around the world. One of the systems I mentioned is called Home Biogas and, as the name suggests, it is a domestic system that takes organic waste like food scraps and even human waste, and turns it into odourless methane gas which is great for cooking. For a long time I’ve had dreams of building myself a simple system for turning our organic waste into cooking energy so it’s great to know I can go online and buy one for just AUD$520 plus shipping.
The Home Biogas 2.0 system is currently on sale for AUD$520 plus shipping. (Source: Home Biogas)
In response I received the following from a reader named Jyoti (who has lived with a Home Biogas system for about a year) which I thought I’d share with you in case you’re interested in getting one for your own place. (Here is another link to The Conversation article she is referring to in case you need a refresher).
I wanted to share my home biogas experience with you. I started using the same system that Samuel has, about a year ago and I must say it works very well. Gas is not produced under 20 degrees C. In winter supplementary heating is required but since our system is outdoors and we only used it during weekends in the cooler months (too dark by the time we got home in the afternoons on weekdays), it still gave me enough for weekly cooking. Wish I could do something about using solar energy in winter to heat up the system. It can be done but it is too complicated for me. It is great during these summer days and we cook on it everyday.
We get fertiliser for our garden everyday too. I use kitchen waste from home (and work too when our composting systems there are full!) as input for the biogas system. These days we can go for weeks without putting out our rubbish bin. Like yourself, we had opened our home to demonstrate this for Sustainable house Day:https://sustainablehouseday.com/house/biogas-house/.
I called up our local council and EPA before I installed our system as I couldn’t find any laws about that but both only mentioned that I should be aware of the Clean Air regulations. Methane by nature is odourless and we burn it during cooking. As Samuel says in The Conversation piece, it is not much different to gas barbeques in backyards. One day I hope to see many more of these installations, may be even community ones that a few households could share and use the energy to light up a barbeque or street light.
I emailed Jyoti back with the following question and comment:
Could you pipe the methane into the house so you could use it to cook inside?
I think it would be fairly simple to build a little solar tent or an insulated box around the digester to keep it warmer in winter.
Is this an insulated solar box built around Samuel’s Home Biogas system? I think it might be… (Source: The Conversation)
And this was her reply:
You certainly could pipe the gas indoors. I wasn’t sure if the system would work well and kept it as a standalone system. Lots of people around the world have done some ingenious things like connecting it indoors in such a way that biogas is used first and when that is over, LPG kicks in.
Solar tent or an insulated box (was wondering if that is what Samuel has around his system) sounds like a good idea. The innovator of the home biogas has solar panels installed on top of his system. Mine is not completely in the sun as I have to use my sun spaces for veggies and plants but all in all it works well. I am mechanically challenged and will take a while to work out some solution for winter days.
So there you have it… both Samuel and Jyoti are very happy with their Home Biogas systems and I think they both have the previous version 1.0. So my guess is that the 2.0 system currently available will work even better. I checked the pricing and, as part of a pre-orderdeal, for about AUD$669 you get the Home Biogas 2.0 digester plus:
The Pre-Order Exclusive Deal includes 5 FREE accessories
Single-Burner Biogas Stove
Growth Boosting Beads
Filter for Fertilizer
Filter for Biogas
Insulating Foam Sheet
This sounds like a pretty good deal to me and I am seriously considering getting one for the Greeny Flat. I just have to check on the size of the system because we don’t have a lot of extra space around here. Plus, by the sounds of it, we would need to locate it in a sunny spot and build some sort of insulated solar box (like Samuel’s) around it because of our relatively cold winters. I’ll keep you posted.
P.S. I have no affiliation with Home Biogas 2.0, I just think it’s a good idea and I want to encourage others to consider this as an option for reducing their fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.
This week I was sent some interesting articles about both industrial and domestic-scale waste-to-energy systems. These outline some very promising developments in the technology needed to convert wastes into usable forms of energy. I’ll get to those in a minute. Firstly I’d like to round out the discussion we’ve had over the last couple of weeks about how inappropriate tile roofs are for Australia climates. In our last three Newsletters (here, here and here) I’ve been banging on about how tile roofs (especially the dark-coloured ones that you see in every new subdivision these days) are a stupid idea in Australia. The truth is they don’t make much sense anywhere unless clay is the only building material you have on hand. But here in Oz, where we have very hot summers and ready access to lots of better materials (like light-coloured Colorbond), a dark-coloured tile roof is completely insane. Anyway, I promise I’ll move on to other subjects but I would just like to share with you an email I received last week from a regular reader named David, which confirms, from first-hand experience, everything I’ve been saying. (This was written in response to last week’s Newsletter entitled ‘Should I Replace My Tile Roof’)
Interesting topic- we have done both, ie: repaint, and reroof.
When we bought our 1974 built house in 1995 in Brisbane, it had a very dark brown tiled roof, and just some ceiling batts. We had it painted with an off white (very light green) heat resistant roof paint in 1996.
The difference was absolutely enormous.
Then by 2012, the light green paint was all flaking off, mostly because the people who applied the coating did a lousy job in preparation. That’s what I was told by experts I called in to look at the problem. It meant that another repaint would be difficult or impossible owing to flaking paint.
We decided to “bite the bullet” and go with a new “surfmist” (white) colorbond roof plus “anticon” blanket. We also had to have an engineer look at it closely as tie downs on the roof framing were non existent, just a few skew nails, relying on the weight of the tiles to keep the roof on in a blow. (Tieing the whole thing down properly cost approximately another $1500.)
All up the cost was about $30k, not bad considering it’s a very large house. Literally NOTHING beats a white colorbond roof.
Dark roofs are the dumbest thing anyone could ever consider in our climate. Even with extreme insulation, all that heat goes into the environment, a heat island effect.
Anyway, the transformation was amazing, and the house is sooo much cooler now, and also even much cooler than after the original roof was repainted. We rarely need to use the aircon now even with our Brisbane summer, and when we do, it’s only one small super efficient 2.5 kW unit, used mainly to dehumidify, which draws around 520w max from our 5kW solar system. (6.5kW of panels, 5kW inventer.)
Even with charging our PHEV daily, we export far more power than we consume.
I shudder when I see many of today’s brick boxes, with little or no eaves, and black or dark coloured roof. Total madness! (One of our neighbours has a jet black roof, and the others are all pretty dark.) There are so many people who just don’t understand even the most basic Physics, (which it just so happens was always my favourite subject at school.)
Today in Brisbane has been a real summer stinker, we reached about 34C here, but we have taken it easy most of the day in our living area with the house well closed up, with just the 2.5 kW Panasonic inverter A/C running. It’s about 27C inside, yet low humidity and extremely comfortable, and meanwhile we have been exporting 4-4.5 kW for most of the day, and even now at 3:30pm we are still exporting 3.85 kW. The aircon is running, but not working hard at all, and probably using 200-300w at the absolute most. (I have a clamp meter on the switchboard so can always keep an eye on things.)
We have also some shade cloth and small trees strategically planted to keep sun off the western walls. We can’t do anything about the lack of wall insulation in our 1970’s house, but were I building from new it would be done PROPERLY with extremely good insulation etc. as you alluded in your newsletter.
P.S. How’s your PHEV going. Both my wife and I absolutely love ours, (it’s white) but will hopefully pass it on to one of our kids when we (hopefully) get a Tesla Model 3 some time next year…. I’ve had my deposit down for a long time. (We actually like the PHEV so much, that if it had more battery range, say another 50klms, I wouldn’t even consider bothering with a Tesla. )
Cheers.
David
This is clearly a man after my own heart… he even has a PHEV like ours… and his comments about light and dark roofs are right on the money. I’ll leave it at that except to say I’ve received two quotes so far for replacing the tile roof on the house next to the Greeny Flat with ‘Shale Grey’ Colorbond and ‘anticon’ blanket. It looks like it will cost around $20k. I’ll keep you posted.
Waste-To-Energy Systems
As I mentioned at the start, I’ve been sent a number of articles this week about waste-to-energy systems. What we do with our food waste and other organic solids is a subject that people don’t always want to talk about but it’s very important. Our poo and our kitchen scraps have the potential to generate a LOT of methane. If this is just allowed to escape into the atmosphere it is a very potent greenhouse gas (about nine times worse than CO2). But if we capture it we have a renewable energy source. And while it’s true that when we burn it we get CO2, it is still much better than either letting methane escape or burning fossil fuels.
Generating Biogas can be done on a domestic or an industrial scale and, if you’re interested, here are some articles to read.
This article from The Conversation talks about the Home Biogas system described in the video above. It is currently available in Australia for about $1000. My brother is thinking about getting one and, if he does, I’ll be sure to let you know how well it works. For more information about the system you can visit the Home Biogas website here.
This article from New Atlas describes a larger system called NEWgenerator which can recover (N)utrients, (E)nergy and (W)ater from sewage. This system has been specifically designed for use in developing countries where clean water, energy and fertiliser can be in short supply and human waste can be a health and environmental disaster.
Finally this other New Atlas article is about the ‘World’s Largest Waste to Energy Plant’ which is due to be completed in Dubai in 2020. This huge power-plant will theoretically deal with 60% of Dubai’s garbage and produce enough energy to power 120,000 homes. I think we’d have to call that a win-win and I think there is a bright future for these kinds of technologies that can convert environmental problems into energy solutions.
A rendering of the Dubai waste-to-energy proposal (Source: New Atlas)
In our last two Newsletters I’ve talked about why brick veneer houses with tile roofs are such a bad choice for Australia’s climate. To reinforce that point, here’s quote from Harry Seidler (‘famous’ Australian architect) which was written in 1954 and sent to me yesterday by one of our readers.
‘…topping it all there is that inevitable huge and expensive pitched roof structure covered with Marseilles tiles which has absolutely no justification for its existence in this climate. Without insulation, the large body of air above such buildings will heat up in summer and produce highly undesirable conditions inside… Such roofs put all their weight onto the exterior walls and require excessive support. They are wasteful in labour and material…
No clue is given by the exterior of the building as to the local climate. With their complete lack of integrated outdoor living facilities, these buildings are utterly alien to a country with a climate of such small temperature variations as those prevailing in the southeastern part of Australia; a climate which is comparable to that of some Mediterranean countries or of California.’
What’s wrong with this picture? (Image Source: Trip Advisor)
Now I’m no fan of Harry Seidler, in fact I detest most of his work especially the Blues Point Tower which I think ruins the view up Sydney Harbour past the gorgeous curves of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. In the photo above look how the Blues Point Tower seems to be supporting the roadway of the Harbour Bridge. This is one of the most iconic and photographed views in the world and the Blues Point Tower stuffs it up (a bit). Compare the photo above to the photo below where I have (gleefully) taken out the Blues Point Tower.
Isn’t that much better?
Unfortunately here in Australia we have an obsession with ‘Heritage Conservation’ which causes us to preserve things simply because they’re old (or designed by a starchitect with a big name like Harry Seidler) regardless of whether they were ever any good or not. So I doubt we’ll ever be able to enjoy the Opera House and Harbour Bridge without the blight of the Blues Point Tower but I live in hope… and I digress.
The point is that even an architect as egotistical an insensitive as Harry Seidler could tell that tile roofs didn’t make any sense in Australia’s climate, yet today, 64 years after he wrote the quote above, it is still the most common way to roof homes, at least in the southeast. The only difference is that now most new roofs seem to be using very dark or even black tiles which is even more insane because they will absorb even more heat in summer. So we’re going backwards.
As far as I’m concerned, the only roofing material that makes sense for our climate is a light coloured Colorbond like the ‘Shale Grey’ roof we have on the Greeny Flat (as you can see in the photo at the top of this page). But wait, we’re doing a complete energy retrofit of the house next to the Greeny Flat (click here to learn more about that) and it has a dark tile roof…. so what’s the story?
Dark tile roof on the house next to the Greeny Flat.
The story is that we are planning to remove all the tiles and replace them with a ‘Shale Grey’ Colorbond roof to match the Greeny Flat and then install solar panels on the new roof. We just haven’t got to that stage of the project yet but here’s a 3D image of how it might look when it’s finished.
3D model of the finished house.
So Should I Replace My Tile Roof?
About a year ago I did an Energy Assessment for a family in Sydney who were having overheating issues in their house. Yesterday I received the following email from Margaret after she had read my last couple of Newsletters.
‘You’ll be pleased to hear that we bought a “new” PHEV towards the end of last year so we are now in the process of getting solar panels installed. We’ve gone with a Space Solar 5.5kW system with micro-inverters. As usual with this type of thing it also raises questions, so we were wondering what your thoughts are on whether our 60 year old terracotta tiles will cope with the mounting of the solar panels. We have factored in that the panels have a 25+ year life so do we bite the bullet now and change to light-coloured colorbond with anticon (ceiling cavity is already insulated to R3.5) to match the back of the house. Have you had any experiences with this type of scenario? The installer says that they check the roof before installing but the last thing we want is to have the roof leak in the future.’
I would not be too concerned with the ability of the old tiles to ‘cope with’ the solar panels. Solar systems are installed on tile roofs all the time. But should they replace their tiles with Colorbond? This is a very good question and they are asking it at the right time (i.e. BEFORE they install solar on their roof). Personally I would be inclined to do what they suggest and replace the tile roof with a light-coloured Colorbond over an anticon blanket. Anticon stands for ‘anti-condensation’ and is a foil-faced sarking product lined with R1.5 fibreglass insulation. It is installed insulation-side up so that the insulation is in contact with the underside of the corrugated metal. This prevents condensation forming (hence the name) and also greatly reduces the amount of heat transfer from the metal into the roof cavity. If they were building a new house I would say there is no question… this is the way to go (if they have an attic but if it’s a raked (cathedral) ceiling then I’d recommend SIPS panels. Click here to read why.)
However on an old house there are other things to consider. The main one is cost. While the Colorbond+anticon is the ideal solution it is a very expensive change to make to a house. We are going to do it on the house next door and we expect it to last for the next 75-100 years so we think it’s worth it. But it’s a hard pill to swallow when the tile roof we have is functioning reasonably well, it keeps the rain out and, in our cooler climate, we don’t have an overheating issue. In Margaret’s case there is an even stronger argument for replacing the roof because they live in a hotter place and they do have an overheating problem. But there are a few other things to consider.
Ventilation – the better ventilated the roof cavity, the cooler it will stay in summer and the dryer it will stay in winter. Attic ventilation is extremely important regardless of the type of roof you have. Older tile roofs typically don’t have sarking under the tiles so they tend to be pretty well ventilated via all the holes between the tiles. Both tile and Colorbond roofs with sarking tend to be poorly ventilated and so do hip roofs, i.e. sloping up on all sides like a pyramid, (e.g. the house in the image above) which is why we have installed a lot of vents in the eaves of the house we’re retrofitting (click here for more on that). Whirlybirds or solar-powered fans are good ways to add ventilation to roof cavities. So, whether you can afford to replace your tiles with Colorbond or not, adding more ventilation to the attic space is a good way to help keep it cool and is very important for keeping it dry and free from mould or rot.
Roof Paint – If you can’t afford to install a light-coloured Colorbond roof another option is to apply a light-coloured paint to your existing tile roof. This is a much less expensive option that can significantly reduce the heat gain through the roof. There are even specially formulated ‘Cool Roof’ paints that have heat-reflective properties which can make dramatic reductions to heat buildup in roof cavities.
Shading from solar panels – another thing to keep in mind is that, if you are planning to install a large array of solar panels on your roof (which Margaret is), those solar panels will actually shade a fair portion of your roof and help to keep the roof cavity cooler as well.
So, the answer to Margaret’s question is, if they can afford it and you want to do the best job for the long term, I would recommend replacing the tile roof with light-coloured Colorbond + anticon. If not then look into having the tile roof painted with a light-coloured ‘Cool Roof’ paint before installing the solar panels and the panels will also help to shade the roof and keep the house cool. But either way remember that good attic ventilation is extremely important.
