A recovery in home improvement spending will soon be underway according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) released today by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Remodeling spending is expected to increase on an annual basis by the end of the year, and the LIRA points to growth accelerating to the double-digit range in the first quarter of 2011.

“Absent a reversal of recent economic progress, there should be a healthy upturn in home improvement activity by year-end and into next year,” says Eric S. Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Homeowner optimism is bolstering a trend toward investing in the home again. “The recovery in home improvement activity appears to be moving beyond simple replacement projects and energy retrofits to broader remodels and upgrades,” says Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies. “A wider activity base would help generate the expected growth in the quarters ahead.”

The Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) is designed to estimate national homeowner spending on improvements for the current quarter and subsequent three quarters. The indicator, measured as an annual rate-of-change of its components, provides a short-term outlook of homeowner remodeling activity and is intended to help identify future turning points in the business cycle of the home improvement industry. The development of the LIRA is detailed in “Developing a Leading Indicator for the Remodeling Industry” (JCHS Research Note N07-1). In July 2008, the LIRA was re-benchmarked due to changes in the underlying reference series. These changes are explained in “Addendum to Research Note N07-1: Re-Benchmarking the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity” (JCHS Research Note N08-1). The LIRA is released by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University in the third week after each quarter’s closing. The next LIRA release date is October 21, 2010.

The Remodeling Futures Program, initiated by the Joint Center for Housing Studies in 1995, is a comprehensive study of the factors influencing the growth and changing characteristics of housing renovation and repair activity in the United States. The Program seeks to produce a better understanding of the home improvement industry and its relationship to the broader residential construction industry.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies is Harvard University’s center for information and research on housing in the United States. Established in 1959, it is a collaborative unit affiliated with the Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School. The Joint Center analyzes the dynamic relationships between housing markets and economic, demographic, and social trends, providing leaders in government, business, and the non-profit sector with the knowledge needed to develop effective policies and strategies.

By: Nathan Stubbs

When Corey Saft looked at the first utility bill for his newly built rent house on Whittington Drive, it was with more than the usual sense of apprehension. The UL architecture professor had spent the past two years dreaming, planning, designing and ultimately building the narrow home, with a footprint under 800 square feet, on the lot adjacent to his residential home, with much of that time devoted to ensuring the house maximized energy efficiencies.

Holding up the bill, Saft now had total vindication. Not only did it read “no amount due” but as it turned out, Lafayette Utilities System actually owed him 62 cents for the month. It was no anomaly. When the next bill came, for the month of April, Saft hardly batted an eye when he saw that utilities for the house had skyrocketed more than 500 percent, up to a whopping $5.

“There was a sense of relief, really,” Saft says of his reaction to the first two months’ bills. “You don’t want to be too optimistic. I mean everything you read says one thing, but usually it never comes out that good. So I was definitely pretty surprised. It was hoped for; I wouldn’t say anticipated. It’s the first time this was done in a hot, humid climate where everything kind of worked out the way it was supposed to.”

This month, the house became one of the first 10 single-family residences in the U.S. to be awarded Passive House certification, a gold standard of green design recently imported from Germany. With the feat, Louisiana becomes one of six states in the U.S. with a Passive House-certified home, making it the first in the South and ranking it ahead of West Coast green energy pioneers Washington, Oregon and California, all of which currently have passive house projects in the works that have yet to complete the certification process. Saft is also in the process of trying to obtain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, a more widely used green building certification system, which could soon make him the first LEED-certified homeowner in Acadiana.

Born out of The Passivhaus Institut, founded in Germany in 1996, passive house design has only recently begun making waves in the U.S., but its standards for strict energy efficiency have proven second to none. At the U.S. Solar Decathlon, where university architecture students compete for the most effectively designed green house (UL’s Beausoleil house was one of 20 finalists last year), a passive house took home top honors in 2007 and 2009. The design method has had similar success in like-minded European competitions.

Saft, who has been teaching at UL since 2003, got introduced to Passive House principles by a former professor from the University of Oregon while working on a project in Idaho that strived to achieve some energy efficiency certification. While financing on that project fell through, the idea of Passive House piqued the architect’s interest. (The U.S. Passive House Institute served as a design consultant on Saft’s house.)

With heavily insulated walls and roofs and double and triple-paned windows, passive homes are engineered to be air tight and high performance. “It’s kind of like this German mentality of absolute control,” Saft says. “You seal a house so well that you know all the air comes in here and goes out there. “Then you can take advantage of it, filter it and redirect heat. When it’s not controlled, and [air] is leaking here and the single pane windows are leaking there, you’re a lot more limited in what you can do.”

Their first three weeks in the house, Hunter Duplantier, Liran Timianski and Justin Aubert got regular knocks on the door from curious passersby interested in the house. The three UL architecture students joked that they may be even be able to put out a sign and start charging for tours. Located across from University Place Apartments, the house stands out from the other single family homes along Whittington Drive as the most modern and intriguing building in the area. A single-pitch metal roof extends into an awning over the home’s high windows, with wood beams forming a long bracket into the side of the house. Wood steps lead up to the front door and portico, which overlooks a vertical garden in the side yard.

The home’s curb appeal was only a small part of the reason Duplantier, Timianski and Aubert jumped at the opportunity to be Saft’s tenants in the home. The home is a few blocks from UL’s architecture school and offers the opportunity to experience green architecture principles at work. The three have all talked openly about using the home as part of a future thesis project. “Not very many people get to live in their thesis project,” Duplantier says.

“I’ve always wanted to do green architecture,” Timianski adds. “That’s what I wanted to study. So to get to live in a house that’s green, and talk to Corey about his thought process through the design, is pretty cool. I want to learn how to do this.”

While Saft expects the house’s utility bills to rise over the summer, he predicts utilities will average less than $25 a month for the year. The house has walls twice as thick as conventional homes with up to 8 inches of spray foam insulation inside 2-by-8-inch studs and inch-thick foam board under the Hardie panel siding.

To bring in fresh air, the house employs an Energy Recovery Ventilation system. An intake and exhaust, part of a black box located in the basement of the house, connects to a duct that runs through the house to ventilate. The real magic happens inside the black box. The cold air going out through the exhaust actually serves to cool and dehumidify the hot air coming in, preconditioning it to a relatively comfortable level even before the AC unit has to go to work. In colder months, the system works the same in reverse, pre-heating the cold air coming in. The ERV claims to be able to recover 95 percent of a home’s heating and cooling, all while exchanging the home’s stale air for fresh air every two hours.

In addition to the ERV, the home manages with a single 1-ton air conditioning system, a ductless mini-split with one indoor venting unit. (a similar-sized conventional home would require a 3-ton system). Saft says the house operates similar to the way a common thermos keeps coffee piping hot for several hours without using any power. “When something’s super-sealed and super-insulated, it acts like a thermos; you don’t have to use your mechanical system that much, and that’s really the big idea. It’s really a low-tech strategy.”

In colder weather, the house should require virtually no air conditioning. The home’s southern windows are designed to catch the low winter sun at a more direct angle, bringing more warmth into the house. In addition, the thermos-like insulation will help trap all heat put off from appliances and warm bodies.

Everything in the house, from the concrete kitchen counters to the water-conserving shower to the condenser dryer, was installed with efficiency in mind. Another innovative feature is an AirTap unit hooked onto the water heater. The unit acts like a heat pump, using a compressor to extract heat from the surrounding air and sending it down copper tubes into the water tank. The AirTap, which requires only a 110-volt plugin, has allowed Saft to unplug his 220-volt water heater.

The home also works wonders in maximizing space. Saft managed to fit three bedrooms and two full bathrooms into the 1,200-square-foot space. The upstairs bathroom is a model of efficiency. The curtain hung just inside the door and the drain on the floor serve notice that the entire room is a shower. The sink, affixed to the back of the toilet, comes on automatically after each flush for hand washing with the water then draining into the toilet’s tank.

Downstairs, an open kitchen and living room provides the main communal space, which is overlooked by a small loft area above the laundry room/ bathroom. Aubert, Timianski and Duplantier have made creative use of the loft, positioning a video projector there to show movies on the opposite wall in the living room. It’s also become an ideal space for creative outlets like painting and playing guitar.

For its tenants, who regularly update Saft on how the house is functioning, the home has served as a constant reminder of low-impact living, inspiring them to go beyond just using less electricity. They recently started a vegetable garden and now often opt for walking or taking a bike over getting in a car.

“Being energy efficient and having a low impact on the environment, that’s where everything is leaning now,” Duplantier says. “And I think now more than ever it’s important for people to start living that in their daily lives. Instead of just hearing about it and talking about it and learning about it, being here has allowed us to actually be able to live with a low impact on a day-to-day basis. It’s probably made me a better person.”

Aside from generating obscenely low utility bills, the building technique has also proven to be relatively cost-effective. Saft, who had the added advantage of designing and overseeing the project himself, calculates his building costs at under $120 a square foot — a price that includes the $20,000 solar panel system installed on the roof (Saft was able to get an 80 percent rebate on the solar system through state and federal incentives and a $2,000 green builder’s tax credit).

For construction, which wrapped up in February, Saft employed a former student of his, Jaron Young, who recently launched his own local company, HJ Design and Construction. Along with Saft, Young oversaw construction of the home from roof to foundation. A-Plus Sevices of Lafayette installed the home’s mechanical systems, including the min-split, ERV and solar system.

“We learned about green building principles in school,” Young says, “but we never actually got to experience it and see the benefits from it. This has inspired me to build more energy efficient and experiment more with these principles.

“I can see there’s a market for it,” he adds.

Young is now on a mission to make green building even more cost effective. The 29-year-old plans to begin construction on his own house this year on property donated from the family of Jared Doise, whose Legends bar franchise in Lafayette Young has helped to build. If the house lives up to his expectations, Young says he and the Doises could expand it into a small development.
Young is aiming to build his home for well under $100 a square foot, while at the same time incorporating several components of passive house and green design.

“I learned a lot from Corey,” he says. “He basically opened the book for me as far as a lot of these [green architecture] principles. Now, I’m applying my construction knowledge to those principles.”
While Lafayette’s first passive house has proven inspiring ­and Saft has gotten positive feedback form the several tours he’s done for friends, student groups and even the city planning department, the UL professor is quick to point out that the main impediment to a project like this comes in a builder’s ability to finance it. Because banks and appraisers base home values strictly off of comparable sales within a given neighborhood, and no precedent exists with the type of energy savings Saft’s home offers, his home can be considered grossly undervalued.

“It gets locked up to the point that you can’t get a bank loan,” he says. “Someone can’t buy this house. Even if they think the solar panels are worth what I paid for them, they can’t buy this house with a bank loan that takes that into account. The bank won’t pay any attention to the solar panels. And they’re not cheap. So the guy who wants to buy it, either he buys it above appraised value and just assumes the loss or doesn’t. So the incentive for building these things is just not there in the way the banks appraise.

“It all costs,” he continues. “If you’re rich and you want to make a zero energy house, it’s not that hard. But the trick is to make it standard practice, that’s the goal. For me, it’s making it cheap and staying inside the realm of standard practice, and that hopefully will inspire other people to do it. Hopefully, little by little, projects like this will help establish some precedents.”

by Jonathan Hiskes

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac claimed the first casualty in their attack on a promising clean-energy financing tool when Boulder County, Colo., canceled the latest round of its popular ClimateSmart Loan Program on Tuesday.

“We are extremely disappointed by the lack of flexibility and vision we’ve encountered with the FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency], and with Fannie and Freddie,” the county Board of Commissioners wrote in cancelling the program.

To date the program has helped more than 600 homeowners invest more than $10 million on rooftop solar panels, home wind systems, and retrofits that cut energy waste — work performed by local businesses. The current funding round had attracted another 173 applicants.

ClimateSmart uses Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), a Berkeley-developed tool that adds the cost of solar arrays, energy-saving retrofits, and other home improvements onto a property’s tax assessment. This lets property owners pay back the cost over 15 to 20 years, removing the barrier of high upfront costs and the possibility they will lose out if they sell before the investment has paid for itself.

Twenty-two states and the Obama administration have endorsed the model as a way to spur home-energy investment, help property owners cut monthly bills, and stimulate local economies. Clean-energy advocates consider it a key innovation for spreading building technology.

But Fannie and Freddie, the government-sponsored mortgage-finance corporations, threw existing programs into confusion last month with letters to lenders prohibiting the assessments. Grist reported the full story last week, including the odd nature of Fannie and Freddie’s concern, since energy-saving investments that pay for themselves make borrowers more financially secure, not less.

Fannie and Freddie promised clarification in their May 5 letters, but have so far provided none.

Boulder County’s notice on Tuesday hints at what the disruption is like on the ground for homeowners eager to improve their homes and businesses eager for work.

“We know the decision to suspend the ClimateSmart Loan Program represents a significant disappointment to you — our applicants and partners — who have looked to this innovative option to make valuable and cost-effective energy efficiency improvements on your homes,” the commissioners’ letter states.

“We also recognize and regret the tremendous loss to our business community which has benefitted greatly from the stimulus effect of the first two rounds of the residential program. Since the program was launched in May 2009, the CSLP has generated over $10 million in projects completed by more than 280 local businesses.”

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) joined a large outcry from governors, mayors, members of Congress, and PACE advocates asking for clarification from FHFA, the lending corporations’ regulator.

Fannie and Freddie’s letters have “put a substantial chill on PACE programs here [in Colorado] and across the country,” Ritter wrote.

The county said it would refund the $75 application fee to citizens who have already paid it. The PACE program for commercial buildings is still active.

As countries around the world seek ways to balance supply and demand of energy, so-called “smart grids” and related home automation sensor technologies are stepping up to fill the need. Bluetooth low energy technology promises to change the way we think about power consumption.

Imagine creating a network of tiny wireless sensors in your home that monitors energy costs and controls electrical appliances to save energy and reduce cost. That’s the idea behind the concept of a “Smart Grid” – a two-way monitoring system that allows consumers and utility providers to better control electricity supply and demand. Making that type of intelligent network a reality is closer than you might think.

It’s no secret that, over the past few years, increasing demand for electricity has strained electrical grids to the point of near or total failure. High-profile blackouts, like the August 2003 blackout that crippled New York City or the blackout that disrupted services in Italy and Switzerland just a month later, and overworked systems like the one in California, have made consumers and utility companies painfully aware of the need to reduce energy consumption.

The good news is that, just as smart grids and similar energy solutions are coming online, Bluetooth low energy technology has arrived on the scene and is poised to deliver a robust solution for home automation sensors.

Recently, we spoke with Bill Drake, lead engineer for White-Rodgers, a business of Emerson, about the role that Bluetooth low energy technology will play in smart grid initiatives.

Drake is uniquely qualified to speak to this topic: He is the chair of the Bluetooth SIG Automation Working Group, which is responsible for developing Bluetooth wireless applications for home and industrial automation, home information and system control. White-Rodgers is also a participant in the newly formed Bluetooth SIG Smart Energy Study Group, which is looking into the technical requirements for supporting smart energy initiatives and solutions.

Q. Why create a smart grid?

A. There are a number of good reasons for this trend. Already in the United States, we’ve built hydroelectric plants in all of the “easy” places. Building more will raise questions of environmental impact, and rightly so. Along the same lines, we can’t just go and build more nuclear power plants or high-voltage lines. There are issues associated with these facilities, and consumers don’t want them in their backyards.

Over the past ten years or so, the U.S. Energy Department and various utility companies have been asking how they can make energy supply and demand come into better balance. When they are out of balance, you see rolling brownouts, widespread blackouts or other interruptions in service. No one wants that to happen.

If we can bring information about supply and demand to the customer, perhaps he will make decisions that will help balance the equation. It’s too late to get a bill that shows high usage in the previous month. The behavior modification opportunity is past. If customers can be made aware of how much electricity is going to cost in the coming hour or day or week, then they can react to it and change their consumption habits.

Q. How does a smart grid work?

A. The power company would communicate information on available supply, along with the cost per kilowatt hour (kWh), to the power meter outside the house, for example. Then that information would be transmitted from the meter into the house where the homeowner can a) see it and b) react to it. There’s a third possible part where there are some pre-programmed electronic devices that can react when the homeowner is not there.

If you have an intelligent thermostat, it can communicate with the meter and adjust the temperature settings or turn off the HVAC systems during times when the cost per kWh exceeds some pre-determined threshold. You can sync your ceiling fans and window blinds, too, so that when the HVAC system shuts off, the fans come on or the blinds lower. Or perhaps a clothes dryer will only come on when demand on the grid is low, perhaps at 2:00 in the morning. This communication among appliances and home systems can be accomplished through wireless sensors or traditional hard wires.

There’s a second part to this as well. On a hot summer day, the power company knows that the grid is about to be in trouble. It can send a signal through the system down to the power meter and into your home to remotely turn off the air conditioner for ten minutes. This so-called load shedding would be automatic, and most people would never even notice the outage.

But remember that this would be an opt-in program; the benefit for participants is a decrease in annual energy costs.

Q. Where does Bluetooth technology fit in?

A. When you look at new home construction, it’s easy to think ahead and hard-wire for smart grid power consumption. But retrofitting a home to do the same thing is costly and presents a logistical problem. Now you have to open up walls, drill holes and run wires. It’s going to take time and cost money.

What if we do all this wirelessly? You can place a sensor on a dryer or a thermostat that communicates with the meter and sends a run/don’t run message to the appliance automatically.

We’ve already seen a lot of wireless automation and control in industrial applications. For example, a steel mill had to monitor air quality at the perimeter of its facility, but running 12,000 feet of cable was going to cost USD$15,000. Using Bluetooth wireless sensors, the cost came down to USD$1,000. Another company needed to monitor equipment and environment in a clean room; going in to check on things requiring scrubbing down and suiting up, which was time-consuming. A Bluetooth wireless sensor solution eliminated that hassle.

It’s a logical next step to use wireless sensors for controlling home environments. You have all the same motivators, just on a smaller scale. We’ve already seen ZigBee step into the smart grid space with its low-power home automation network sensors, so we know wireless sensors are a great solution.

Bluetooth technology can provide a user-oriented solution in the smart energy applications, especially as the new Bluetooth low energy technology comes to market, because of its robustness, efficiency and ability to coexist with other wireless technologies. Also, the existing Bluetooth ecosystem, with mobile phone, personal computer and automobile presence, can provide the user interface for smart energy applications.

Bluetooth technology uses a frequency hopping spread spectrum technology with AFH and APC. As the 2.4 GHz band becomes more and more crowded, fixed channel technologies will have a harder and harder time communicating above all the noise. Bluetooth technology, on the other hand, performs very well in noisy environments by not only avoiding outside interference but also by not creating interference.

A Washington University study showed that Classic Bluetooth technology provided a solution that consumed less power and offered better coverage in a home automation-type of network. I think that Bluetooth low energy technology is going to enable Bluetooth technology to move into areas where it hasn’t been seen as competitive before. It will extend the ecosystem from your PC, car and mobile phone to almost everything in your daily life that uses energy.

Q. Do you think Bluetooth low energy technology will become the default technology for smart grid applications?

A. I think the marketplace will determine that, but certainly the fact that Bluetooth technology is already in your car for hands-free calling makes for an easy transition to having, say, an electric car communicate with the home system about the best time to recharge. Also, as people upgrade to more efficient HVAC systems in existing homes, the move to wireless controls will be highly motivated. And in some places, like in California, legislation will force the issue.

The biggest advantage that I see in Bluetooth technology is that the existing ecosystem, combined with its proven data transmission efficiency and robust operation, makes it seamless for consumers. Half of the system already exists in a ubiquitous user interface. It’s called a mobile phone.

SunPower Corp., a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cells, solar panels and solar systems, announced today that it has produced a full-scale solar cell with a sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 24.2 percent at its manufacturing plant in the Philippines. This is a new world record, confirmed by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), for large area silicon wafers.

“This new world record demonstrates SunPower’s ability to extend our lead in manufacturing the world’s highest efficiency solar cells,” said Bill Mulligan, vice president of technology and development for SunPower. “Our patented and proprietary, high-efficiency solar cell technology drives down the cost of solar energy by increasing the energy production from each solar panel.”

Improved cell efficiency reduces the levelized cost of energy by increasing the energy production from each wafer manufactured into a SunPower solar cell. For the same reason, increased efficiency reduces the cost per watt and cost per kilowatt-hour for feedstock and materials, depreciation and other manufacturing expenses, installation time, land and system operations, and related maintenance.

“As we celebrate SunPower’s 25th anniversary this year, I am thrilled to see the company achieve technology milestones that were inconceivable only a few years ago,” said Dr. Richard Swanson, SunPower founder and chief technology officer. “SunPower’s research and development and engineering teams have increased cell efficiency by a full four percentage points over the last five years while radically driving down manufacturing costs. We are extremely proud of their continued success.”

By: David Roberts

Residents of Hammarby Sjöstad, a district on the south side of Stockholm, Sweden, don’t let their waste go to waste. Every building in the district boasts an array of pneumatic tubes, like larger versions of the ones that whooshed checks from cars to bank tellers back in the day. One tube carries combustible waste to a plant where it is burned to make heat and electricity. Another zips food waste and other biomatter away to be composted and made into fertilizer. Yet another takes recyclables to a sorting facility.

After they are done, district authorities hope Hammarby Sjöstad will produce about half its power independently, a task made easier by the fact that residents, thanks to a broad range of efficiency and conservation measures, will consume half the energy of the average Swede (who already consumes only about 75 percent as much as the average American). These intrepid Swedish urbanites are pushing the envelope on a phenomenon catching on in cities across the developed world: “distributed energy.”

That’s the beginning of my new piece for Scientific American, “Local Power: Tapping Distributed Energy in 21st-Century Cities.” Click on over to read the rest. I want to add a few quick things here.

First, the piece is focused mostly on technology, since I assumed that’s what most Scientific American readers are curious about, but the primary barriers to distributed energy are not technological but institutional. Changing the way electric utilities (and their regulators) operate, changing financial institutions and mechanisms, creating more cohesive regional governing authorities, planning across sectors to reduce emissions, and growing carbon markets — all these have to do with changes in law and practice.

Second, yeah, yeah, solar panels are expensive. But cogeneration isn’t. Passive solar space and water heating are cheap. Geothermal heat pumps are economical. Burning methane from wastewater treatment and landfill facilities is cost-effective. In many areas biomass is renewable and relatively inexpensive for combined heat and power. District heating is lowering costs all over northern Europe. And of course efficiency is cost negative.

Efficiency — the other half of distributed energy — pays for the rest. That doesn’t just mean more efficient appliances and cars, but more efficient metropolitan systems. Sensors and microchips are getting cheaper so fast that pretty soon it will be possible to wire everything. Information about where energy is being generated and consumed, where traffic is congested, which parking spaces are occupied, where fresh and wastewater are flowing and how much, will be available at every node in the network. With that kind of information and the computing algorithms to make sense of it available to every building, vehicle, and consumer device, it will be possible to institute variable pricing for everything from energy to congestion to parking to water. Efficiency will be infused into the system rather than tacked on.

Third, the social effects of distributed energy are among its most intriguing aspects, but also most difficult to predict. Recall what happened when computing and information technology became widely available. Now imagine the hackers of the future with their hands on local energy management. The very notion probably makes Dick Cheney lose sleep at night (if he sleeps at all), but our kids and grandkids will take their ability to shape their environment for granted. As with the internet, the furious pace of distributed innovation will produce benefits that dwarf the security risks.

More prosaically, local distributed energy just requires more civic involvement. Efficient living spaces are by nature smaller, so there’s more time spent in communal spaces. There’s trash sorting and thermostat programming and community planning and all the rest. Several sources I spoke to for the story waxed poetic about the cities and districts pursuing distributed energy, how the effort became a source of civic pride and engagement. As Bill McKibben puts it in a beautifully wrought essay, Hammarby Sjöstad is “a place that makes sense.”

PEACHTREE CITY, GA. — Rinnai Corp. has extended the heat exchanger warranty on RC98HPe, RC98HPi, RC80HPe and RC80HPi condensing tankless water heaters used in recirculating applications from three years to 12 years. The new warranty pertains to recirculating systems that are controlled through an aquastat/thermostat, a timer or an on-demand system. The change means that Rinnai brand condensing tankless products used in qualified recirculating systems will now feature the same 12-year heat exchanger warranty as all residential installations.

“We originally implemented a reduced heat exchanger warranty on condensing units in recirculating systems due to the accelerated wear that results from use with a constantly running circulation loop,” said Joe Holliday, Rinnai’s director of product management. “However, we realize that advances in some recirculating systems have eliminated the need for constant recirculation. This, along with advances in the strength and durability of our heat exchanger design, allows us to offer the same warranty as traditional residential installations.”

The warranty change is effective immediately on all new Rinnai brand condensing tankless unit installations with qualified recirculation systems and is not retroactive.

by Todd Woody

Nipton, CA – The desert micropolis — population 38 — announced Thursday that it had installed a solar array that will provide 85 percent of the town’s electricity. (The population of this outpost on the edge of Mojave National Preserve spikes to 250 or so during tourist season.) The solar system is ground- rather than on rooftop-mounted, and only generates 82 kilowatts. But what is notable is the technology developed by Skyline Solar, a Silicon Valley startup I first wrote about for Grist last year.

The company’s power plants resemble solar thermal parabolic trough installations. They deploy long rows of mirrors which heat tubes of liquid that that suspended over the arrays. The heat turns the liquid into steam, which drives an electricity-generating turbine. Skyline’s system is purely solid state, however.

Each 240-foot-long trough row concentrates the sun on photovoltaic modules attached to the edges of the arrays. That boosts the solar cell’s electricity production as does a tracking mechanism that allows the arrays to follow the sun throughout the day. Such concentrating photovoltaic systems — which Skyline calls “high gain solar” — have been a niche market due to their relatively high costs. But as solar cell prices decline and solar thermal projects get bogged down in environmental disputes, they have become increasingly attractive as they can be built near utility substations and plugged directly into the grid eliminating the need for expensive new transmission systems.

Skyline has pushed to lower costs by using common materials — glass, steel — and by designing the arrays so their components can be mass-produced by automotive manufacturers. The company last year struck a deal with the Michigan subsidiary of Canadian auto manufacturing giant Magna International to make components for its HGS 1000 solar system.

In other news on the solar frontier Thursday, Silicon Valley startup MiaSolé said the National Renewable Energy Laboratory had confirmed that the company’s copper indium gallium selenide solar cells have 13.8 percent efficiency in production. Such thin-film cells typically have a lower efficiency than standard polysilicon solar cells but are cheaper to manufacture. With an efficiency approaching 14 percent, MiaSolé could give some standard module makers a run for their money.

By: Priyanka Dayal

WESTBORO, MA — To some, it’s an eyesore. To others it’s art.

Walter “Jay” E. Johnson is one of the others.

Mr. Johnson paid more than $12,000 to have a big white cylinder erected in his backyard at 34 Eli Whitney St. He likes the way it looks, but he probably wouldn’t have paid quite so much for simply a lawn ornament.

The 30-foot-high structure is a Windspire, a vertical-axis wind turbine that spins with the wind and produces power. The turbine, which is connected to the grid, is expected to generate enough power to cover one-fourth of Mr. Johnson’s home energy use.

A tall, hollow cylinder sits atop a pole and spins horizontally. It starts generating power with wind speeds as mild as 8 mph but is built to withstand hurricane-caliber winds.

Unlike the more traditional horizontal-axis turbine, like the one at Worcester’s Holy Name Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School, the vertical-axis turbine doesn’t have blades that spin only when pointing into the wind.

Vertical-axis turbines are typically built much closer to the ground. And they’re almost silent when they’re spinning.

To Mr. Johnson, the most important difference between the two types of turbines is the look. He first saw a Windspire — a brand of the vertical-axis turbine, sold by Windspire Energy of Reno, Nev. — on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

“I thought it was some sort of modernist art,” he said.

When he found out the aluminum sculpture was actually an energy-capturing turbine, he immediately wanted his own. After a few months of discussions with the town, he received a building permit.

The Windspire in Westboro is just the fourth to be installed in Massachusetts, following ones built at a home in Wellfleet, at the Museum of Science in Boston and at a school in Kingston.

Mr. Johnson’s Windspire started spinning right after it was installed on Saturday, and it twirled slowly yesterday morning, even before afternoon storms brought stronger gusts.

It is visible to drivers on Eli Whitney Street, but not too prominently. It’s about level with the two-story house Mr. Johnson shares with his wife, Susan, and it’s lower than some of the trees on the couple’s nine-acre property.

Many birds of many colors dwell on his land, but Mr. Johnson said he doesn’t believe the wind turbine will be a threat to the winged creatures.

A 67-year-old retiree of the Foreign Service, Mr. Johnson is environmentally conscious, but he says he wouldn’t have purchased a Windspire if he thought it wouldn’t be cost-effective.

He took a bit of a risk, though, by buying the turbine without completing a formal wind study. “The worst thing that can happen is I have an expensive lawn ornament,” he said with a grin.

Through a federal wind energy program, Mr. Johnson received a more than $2,000 income tax rebate; he didn’t qualify for a rebate from the state.

His Windspire is expected to pay for itself in about six years, but the period is likely to be longer for others. Mr. Johnson’s property has “unusual wind flow,” said Mark M. Robinson, president of New Day Energy of Kingston.

Mr. Robinson’s company has installed all four of the Windspires in Massachusetts. He has three more installations scheduled in the coming weeks. New Day Energy is the only company installing Windspires in all the New England states except Maine, Mr. Robinson said.

For most customers, the payback for a Windspire is about 13 years. The turbines are expected to last 20 to 25 years. In average winds, each turbine produces about 2,000 kilowatt-hours per year.

Vertical-axis wind turbines are not nearly as common as horizontal-axis turbines. “They’ve only begun to be mass-produced in recent years,” Mr. Robinson said.

Interest is growing among homeowners, he said, adding, “Interestingly enough, I find I’m being approached by automobile dealers … The dealers are trying to green up their dealerships.”

But Mr. Robinson is less than pleased with the state’s treatment of vertical-axis wind turbines: The turbines aren’t eligible for rebates from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s Micro Wind Initiative.

The Clean Energy Center made changes to the rebate program, “but still left it so verticals can’t really apply,” Mr. Robinson said.

He said vertical-axis turbines work differently from horizontal-axis turbines, so they shouldn’t have to meet the same requirements. For example, Mr. Robinson said, vertical-axis turbines can be built between tall city buildings, harnessing power from notorious wind tunnels.

Kate Plourd, spokeswoman for the Clean Energy Center, said the rebate program doesn’t specifically prohibit vertical-axis wind turbines.

“The program mandates the turbines meet specific industry certification testing … If vertical-axis turbines were to meet industry certifications, they would be qualified for a Micro Wind rebate. As of now, they don’t.”

The Clean Energy Center, which has funded more than 70 awards to small wind projects, has received just three applications for grants for vertical-axis wind turbines. Ms. Plourd said the Micro Wind program, along with the center’s other programs, is reviewed annually.

The lack of grant money from the state clearly didn’t deter Mr. Johnson, who is hoping to put up more turbines if the first one works well.

He didn’t warn his neighbors about the new structure in his yard, but so far, he hasn’t received any complaints.

“I’d like to see this happen all over the place,” he said. “I’m very conscious of how much it hurts our whole country to be using fossil fuels. There’s just no point in delaying the future. We need to get on with the free energy.”

By: Jonathan Hiskes

California’s largest electricity provider — Pacific Gas & Electric Co. — has gotten some understandable love from the environmental world recently. It’s part of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an enviro/business alliance calling for a national climate plan. It told off (and quit) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for hating all over clean energy and climate science. And it announced a significant 500 MW solar project last spring.

As more and more companies speak up for clean-energy investment (GE, Google, PepsiCo, John Deere, and the big three automakers did so last week), it’s tempting to sort major corporations into “good guy” and “bad guy” camps. Or at least “gets it” and “doesn’t get it” camps.

PG&E, an investor-owned utility, shows why that doesn’t work. The northern California utility has spent a cool $46 million on a ballot initiative that would protect its market share from encroachment by municipally owned utilities. It’ll have the effect of blocking out power providers that want to make stronger renewable investments than PG&E’s admirable but modest steps.

How it works: Proposition 16, on next Tuesday’s state primary ballot, would prevent local governments from creating or expanding public power services unless they get a two-thirds popular vote. That difficult bar makes it unlikely that cities like San Francisco will be able to form municipal utilities to compete with PG&E.

Why it matters: It’s a prime example of corporate brazenness in the age of Citizens United — PG&E is using $46 million of its investors’ money to protect its market share from nonprofit challengers. It continues the problem of legislation being made through ballot initiative. It’s contributing to the assault on public services through TV ads that raise fears about “government-run electric service.”

It also prevents one form of clean-energy expansion: community choice aggregation, a method that places like Marin County, Calif., have used to purchase renewable energy. Such methods aren’t the be-all-end-all of renewable investment, but they’re a tool worth defending.

Who cares: A very long list of cities, towns, counties, environmental groups, consumer groups, and editorial boards oppose the measure. So do AARP, the League of Women Voters, and another large private utility, San Diego’s Metropolitan Water District. Of course, none of them have $44 million to compete with PG&E, the measure’s dominant supporter.

“This is a for-profit corporation trying to kill off its not-for-profit rivals,” San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Prop. 16 is a colossal fraud perpetrated on the people of California.”

Says Sierra Club California: “There is a compelling public interest to make it as easy as possible for communities to promote clean energy, reduce pollution and greenhouse gases, and increase local and consumer control over energy decisions. PG&E’s ballot initiative makes a mockery of its self-proclaimed leadership in clean energy and climate protection, places corporate interest above the public good, and makes it more difficult to confront global climate change.”

Paul Tullis at True/Slant has a comprehensive explanation of the campaign, if you’re looking for more.

California already faces an attack on its landmark climate plan financed by two Texas refinery companies. It doesn’t need an attack from a local ally.