We Connect Sustainability Professionals to Ideas and Each Other.
The Building Energy Masters Series was launched in 2012. We learned a lot. This 3-minute video summarizes some of those important lessons that we can build on to make the program successful in 2013 and beyond. It’s the cliff-notes for NESEA members who haven’t had a chance to get involved yet.
“Rather than a snack, I want to provide the entire meal.”
Those were Marc’s words when we first met to outline his ‘Zero Net Energy Homes’ course for the Building Energy Masters Series. I’ve watched him invest a tremendous amount of time and thought into the course since that initial meeting – now that I see all the content, I can confidently say that he’s achieved his goal. He’s created an incredibly detailed learning path for people who really want to do this work. It leverages a ton of existing content, and Marc’s video presentations take it to the next level and tie everything together.
Click this link to download our working syllabus for the class starting October 1st. The formatting is unpolished, but it will give you a sense for the flow and depth of the offering.
I thought it would be useful to see what the entire meal looks like, just in case you’re hungry.
This spring the first cohort of Building Energy Masters Series students completed the six-week Passive House training, taught by Paul Eldrenkamp and Mike Duclos. They got a phone call from the instructors on the first day of the class and received a packet with the text book and other NESEA-related materials, then worked their way through a series of videos, reading assignments, quizzes, and homework. Here’s what they said about the training:
So – a pretty good start, we think. This summer we’re working on integrating a discussion wall into the course page to promote more interaction within the course, and we’re also going to roll out progress trackers so the instructors can see who’s engaged and who’s not.
A revised and improved version of the Passive House Training will be available this fall, along with two new Building Energy Masters Series Offerings:
In parallel, we’re developing a certificate program to for the Building Energy Masters Series – our goal is to build a sustainable program that facilitates the dissemination of deep expertise. We’ll continue to keep the community informed, and always welcome volunteers or feedback. If this sounds interesting for any reason, let Mary or Travis know how you’d like to get involved.
I spent this morning on the job site of a high-performance home – a MacArthur Construction Company design-build project in Cambridge, MA. Mike Duclos was there to perform a third-party energy model for the home, evaluating it against the Passive House standard.
As a lowly business person, I was there to answer one question: Why Passive House?
Duncan MacArthur, founder of MacArthur Construction, is a pragmatic guy. He finds Passive House useful for re-framing conversations with mechanical engineers and clients:
I’m just glad somebody’s setting the bar extraordinarily high. It’s something to shoot for – sure, we usually end up backing off in certain places, but by starting the conversation with Passive House we’re ending up in a drastically different place than by trying to make incremental improvements over what was done in the past.
Mike Duclos, instructor for NESEA’s new Building Energy Masters Series Passive House training course, put it this way:
I started my career in technology – building high-tech products. [Holding up his cell phone] At that time nobody thought this was possible. Then somebody built the first one and it was a huge thing that looked like a brick. Now we have iPhones. I think something similar is happening with buildings, and in five years we’ll be in a dramatically different, and better place. Germany is already there – all we have to do is import.
My takeaway: Passive House is easier to understand as an outsider than LEED, or any of the other high-performance building standards. So if you’re committed to sustainable building, it may be the most useful tool available for framing conversations with clients and subcontractors in a way that steers the project in a successful direction. You can play good cop, while the strict, German standard plays bad cop. As a marketer, project manager, and business owner, I see tremendous value in having the right conversations and the power of language on your side. Having Passive House in your arsenal is a great investment for building professionals, even if you don’t get there with every (or any) project.
We get a lot of requests from professionals who are looking to start new solar companies or expanding their existing businesses into solar. With the last Massachusetts SREC aucton clossing at $535 MWh, and New Hampshire solar incentives coming online it’s no wonder so many companies are looking to it. For those in the NESEA crowd looking to get into the space or expand existing businesses, we’ve compile a list of reading material aimed at helping contractors measure demand in their market, make initial sales, and building a profitable company, or division of an existing company.
Marketing
Sales
Solar Financing
Design and Installation
Other
At HeatSpring, we’re all about the solar contractors on the ground.
Lately there’s been a lot of debate about solar modules. Which ones are bankable? The most efficient? The best price? We’ve also been reiceving a number of questions from our alumni and readers about modules. While, I could spend plenty of time research modules and using my own experience to create some conclusions, it wouldn’t be very useful. WE WANT to hear from you, the installer and NESEA community, about the solar modules that you most prefer and why. No distributors or manufactueres will be allowed to vote and will make sure of this by requiring a name and valid email address and company name.
After the voting has concluded in one month, we will compile all the data and make it public for you the installers to see and use.
You can vote for your favorite module here. It will take less then 3.8 minutes of you day.
We’re most interested in learning:
1) Your favorite solar module
2) Why?
3) Any anecdote you can share as to why this is your favorite module.
We know that we may have missed a couple companies but feel this represents the majority of products used in the US.
Again, if you are an installer, you can vote for your favorite module here.
We will never release any of your contact information, this is just used to make sure you are not a distributor or manufacturer.
Thank you,
Brian Hayden
We all know that the local contracting business is built on word-of-mouth, relationships and trust. Renewable energy is no different. People LOVE talking about their new solar or geothermal system, so figuring out of to leverage that word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing effort you can undertake.
This is the second article in a series of columns on marketing for renewable energy companies. The first article described how to generate customer leads by holding a geothermal or solar workshop. These are four suggestions for what to do next. Keep in mind you can use all of these ideas with solar photovoltaic, geothermal or solar thermal systems. For the sake of this post, we will use geothermal for consistency.
1) Document the whole installation process from A to Z. Loves Geothermal, in Maryland, is a great example of this. Burn the pictures and videos you have from working on the project onto a CD and give it to the customer when you’ve completed the project. Make sure to have a branded introduction at the beginning of the video, but make it short. Just include your company name and contact information. What will this do? If friends of your customer ask about the system, they will have an awesome video to show, and they will pass your name around. Also, any questions that the customer isn’t able to answer for his or her friends can be redirected to your business.
You can use the CD on future sales calls. Aside from cash, people just want to make sure that the technology works and that you can complete the job. Showing a video of your team doing the work for a customer who loves you will decrease their fear.
Lastly, if you have a website, you can easily use the video and/or pictures on it. Most potential customers will check your website before making a decision.
2) Create a customer video. Similar to documenting the whole process, shoot a short video of the client and have them describe why they went with geothermal, how they felt as the process went along, and if they’ve been happy with the finished system. Just as you can use the installation video to secure future sales, this is proof of customer satisfaction.
3) Offer tours of existing installations. This depends on the type of relationship you have with the client, but one of the best ways to convince someone who’s on the fence is for them to see a happy customer and a system that is operating. Also, if you schedule a regular tour, you can bring many potential clients on a visit at once, which makes your sales process much more efficient. This is also a good way to keep in touch with old customers to make sure they’re satisfied and to find out if they’d like any more work done in the future.
4) Write a newspaper article. Green gets press. If your installation is one of the first in town, call the local newspaper to see if they have anyone who covers environmental issues. Pitch a story about how a local homeowner is taking advantage of government grants to decrease their heating bills and make sure to follow up, providing any information they may need. If it’s not one of the first projects in town, pitch it as a trend and suggest they interview a few different system owners.
All photos by Matthew Cavanaugh Photography unless otherwise credited.
