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.
An open invitation from Andy Padian, NESEA Board Treasurer and GreenHomeNYC Board Chair
This is an open invitation to join a unique and timely one day event for owners, managers, investors and developers on Saturday, December 1, at Hunter College in Manhattan.
The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) and its NYC Chapter, GreenHomeNYC, have assembled a slate of local experts and owners to help those involved with multifamily buildings in New York City get a leg up the new requirements and learn the best, most profitable path forward for their buildings.
Andy Padian, a board member of both NESEA and GreenHomeNYC and chair of the conference said, “Understanding the new benchmarking and energy auditing requirements in NYC is a first step to reducing your energy and water bills. After you navigate that, you need to hear from some of the best practitioners in the field about running your building efficiently, safely, and considering our recent brush with Hurricane Sandy, emphasizing resilience.”
Filling a very critical information gap, this one day conference combines the best technical information with first-hand experience on exactly how to save money in multifamily buildings through reduced energy and water usage. “We’ve got the people you really need to hear from — the owners who have gone through the process already, of course,” Padian explains.
NYC has enacted one of the boldest initiatives for sustainability in large buildings in the country. Known as the Greener Greater Buildings Plan, it focuses on buildings over 50,000 square feet. In New York City, many more multifamily buildings than office buildings fall into this category, so the new laws become particularly important to these multifamily owners. But this is the first conference to attempt to get owners and managers in the room together to learn exactly how to proceed. “I have invited the building experts who helped develop the framework for the new laws, LL87 and 84, to explain and demystify the process. One goal of this conference,” says Padian, “is that no one will leave with questions unanswered.”
The more typical multifamily building in the city, with 20 to 50 apartments and smaller, has its own complicated path to follow. Owners and building managers need to hear from each other about financing and real costs, and they need to share tricks they have learned that have helped them save money after finally getting an energy audit. “You have to get the owners and managers together to show the mistakes to avoid and to share the best practices to use. The value of this can’t be overstated,” says Padian.
Many organizations are collaborating with NESEA and GreenHomeNYC to get their members to this unique event. These include the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, The Community Preservation Corporation, Enterprise Community Partners, The Supportive Housing Network of NY, the NYS Association for Affordable Housing, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Con Edison, and NYSERDA.
The conference will be held at Hunter College on 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, from 9-4. Continental breakfast and a bag lunch are included. A reception following the event provides the opportunity to meet and network with the speakers and the other attendees. The conference fee is $150 and a reduced rate is available for CUNY students.
For more information and to register, go to http://www.nesea.org/
And voila — instant one-day NESEA conference in the Big Apple.
Those of you who are NESEA members have probably already seen the announcement for BuildingEnergy NYC, a multifamily conference we’re hosting at CUNY – Hunter College on December 1, 2012. The conference will focus on the regulatory arena – the things that building owners and operators need to know to comply with increasingly stringent energy efficiency requirements, on technical know-how, with examples and case studies from hundreds of multifamily buildings that illustrate best practices and lessons learned, and on financing multifamily projects.
The line-up of speakers and topics for this event is really impressive — you can check it out at http://www.nesea.org/buildingenergy/benyc/.
The conference came together at warp speed. Less than five months from concept to implementation, and less than a week to plan the content. Here’s the back story . . . .
In May 2012, the board directed me to focus on launching an event in NYC to help expand NESEA’s reach into underserved parts of our territory, and to help fulfill the promise of our purported service territory – the 10 Northeastern states. NESEA board treasurer and well-known curmudgeon Andy Padian took up the charge and found us a location that we could use, free of charge, thanks to our friends at CUNY-Hunter’s Institute for Sustainable Cities.
On October 19th, Andy confirmed that CUNY-Hunter had space available on Saturday, December 1st, just six weeks away. Warp speed conference planning began!
On October 26th, Andy invited a group of multifamily building superstars from organizations like The Community Preservation Corporation, Steven Winter Associates, GreenHomeNYC, Jonathan Rose, NYSERDA, NYSAFAH, Enterprise Community Partners, Related Companies and elsewhere to a three-hour meeting to plan the conference. They left the meeting with a grid of nine almost fully-fleshed-out sessions. Within the next two weeks, speakers were confirmed, we set up a registration page, and . . . voila . . . instant conference.
Of course we all know that this isn’t really the way it happened. This seemingly “instant conference” didn’t happen instantly. What made it happen “instantly” was Andy Padian’s passion for NESEA, his expansive network of devoted GreenHomeNYC volunteers, and high-powered energy geeks in New York, and his strong powers of persuasion. Now only if we could find a way to clone Andy. . . .
Seriously, BE NYC is going to rock. If it’s as great as we think it will be, we’ll sell out all 300 seats, and NESEA members from other parts of our territory will be lining up to host the next one-day conference. I hope you’ll join us.
The keynote speaker for BuildingEnergy13 will be Alex Blumberg of NPR’s Planet Money and PRI’s This American Life. He will be speaking on “economics for environmentalists”.
As anyone knows who listens to his pieces on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, the Planet Money podcast , or any of the economics episodes that This American Life has broadcast (“The Giant Pool of Money” in particular), Alex presents and explains complex economics ideas with real wit and clarity.
I’m really excited about this. In my opinion, economics is a weak point within the NESEA community.
Some questions that I have mulled for some time that might make their way into Alex’s talk include these:
Carbon tax versus cap & trade. “Cap & trade” garnered much attention a couple years ago but has completely disappeared from the debate this election year. I realize in the current political climate, hoping for either cap & trade or a carbon tax is a delusional pipe dream. But the political climate might change as the global climate does, and the NESEA community should be prepared to advocate for good policy, which means we need to understand this issue closely.
The discount rate question. This boils down to trying to calculate how much it’s worth spending now to benefit ourselves—or our descendants—in the future. This question applies to a broad range of scales, from individual projects and buildings all the way to regional and national policy. Here’s a quick example of what “discount rate” is about, not to explain the concept but to communicate the consequences: Nicholas Stern (lead author of “The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change”) has advocated for a discount rate of 1.4%. Using this rate means that it’s worth investing $247 billion today to head off $1 trillion in damage 100 years from now. On the other hand, William Nordhaus, the Yale economist, has argued for a discount rate of 6%. Using this rate means that it’s only worth investing $2.5 billion today to head off $1 trillion in damage 100 years from now. Big difference, no? The discount rate question is huge, and we need to try to get a handle on it.
“The tragedy of the commons.” Garret Hardin introduced this concept to a wide audience in 1968, and it’s more relevant now than ever. The basic idea is that individuals, acting completely sensibly and in their own self-interest, can do serious damage to the common good and ultimately can sabotage their own well being through a series of otherwise completely rational acts. Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom has done some really interesting work on how to evaluate and manage the problem, work that’s more than germane to NESEA practitioners, and it would be interesting to get an accessible explanation of her theories.
Accounting for energy replacement costs. The Carbon Age has allowed people to benefit from cheap energy. That cheap energy will not last forever. Should the inevitable depletion and ultimate disappearance of fossil fuels have any impact on the price we pay for that energy now? Or can we just maintain the status quo and continue to ignore the issue?
The Jevons paradox. Mid-19th-century economist William Stanley Jevons observed that as England got more efficient at burning coal, England burned more coal rather than less. Odd, no? If we get more productivity from a unit of coal, shouldn’t we need to use less coal? Apparently, it doesn’t work that way. This is a potentially inconvenient idea for an organization of practitioners who advocate ever and ever more efficient use of energy, and we would benefit from understanding the concept and its applications and misapplications.
Can a growth economy be reconciled with lowered resource usage? Despite the hopeful thinking of many NESEA practitioners, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we face a choice between either achieving dramatic reductions in carbon output or maintaining historic levels of economic growth—we can’t have both. Or can’t we? I personally have a hard time imagining how we can move to more expensive, less portable and storable energy sources such as solar and wind and still maintain the same levels of economic growth we’ve enjoyed the last couple of centuries. But that may be a result of my own limitations.
On this, and my other questions, perhaps Alex Blumberg can shed some light and show me the error of my ways. I invite you to come to the keynote address next March 6th and find out.
Welcome everybody to the 2012 annual meeting of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.
I am really excited that we’re here in Portland. There’s a vibrant green building and sustainable energy community here – a community that has built what they need in the form of the monthly Building Science Discussion Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, Passive House Maine, USGBC’s Maine Chapter, the Pretty Good House movement and many other formal and less formal organizations and collaborations.
The Portland area has traditionally not been as well served by NESEA as many other areas in our territory. And for as long as I’ve been at NESEA, we’ve been hoping to change that. So I was delighted when NESEA board member Phil Kaplan invited me to Portland and asked us to consider hosting our annual meeting here.
Since our first meeting with Phil and the Building Science Discussion Group in June, many of you Mainers have drunk the NESEA Kool Aid. Architect Rick Renner, a longtime NESEA member, is running for the NESEA board of directors. Sam Strickland is serving on a committee to help us create and launch online communities of practice so that geography ceases to be such a challenging barrier for NESEA members who want to learn and share year round. Steve Konstantino of Maine Green Building Supply has become a business member and opened his facility up last night for an annual meeting pre-game – a Building Science Discussion Group to welcome the whole NESEA community to town.
Profound gratitude. As I prepared my remarks for tonight, that was the mindset I started from. I feel profoundly grateful to this community and appreciative of all that we are accomplishing together.
Let me explain to whom I am grateful and why.
I am grateful to the more than 200 members who are really actively engaged with NESEA far above and beyond simply writing a check and receiving their monthly newsletter and their BuildingEnergy Magazine twice a year. It is surely unprecedented within NESEA that almost a third of our members are actively engaged in planning the conference, hosting sites in our Green Buildings Open House tour, submitting content for BuildingEnergy magazine, and serving on NESEA program and board committees.
I am grateful to Jamie Wolf for recently helping us to articulate something that we’ve known intuitively for a very long time: that the BuildingEnergy Conference is NESEA’s crown jewel, or the center of NESEA’s universe, but that it occurs only for 3 days/year in Boston. Jamie shared with me his vision for BE365, which makes the BuildingEnergy experience available to NESEA members every day of the year through various events, gatherings, online learning and other forums throughout the year.
I am grateful to lifetime NESEA member Bernice Radle, who at the ripe old age of 26 is rallying a group of NESEA member preservationists to plan a kick-ass Green Buildings Open House tour in Buffalo on October 13th, and who is trying to bring the rest of the NESEA community into the digital age with her incredible promotional savvy using twitter, facebook, blogging and Pinterest.
I am grateful to Marc Rosenbaum, one of our NESEA rock stars, who has partnered with us, and who has spent more than 100 hours to develop and help us launch a 10-week online course for the BuildingEnergy Masters Series, and who recently shared with me, “I could develop and market a course like this on my own. Yet what appeals to me about this arrangement is that I get to advance my personal mission of expanding our collective capabilities, while creating an income stream, and also give back to this organization that has been such a key factor in my success. However, it’s a business partnership, not a charity - NESEA has skin in the game just as I do.”
I am grateful to NESEA board member Kate Goldstein, who, although she is still a starving student, is digging deep for NESEA this year. Not only did she become a lifetime member – a great investment for somebody who’s still in her 20s – but she has also pledged a leadership gift in our annual fundraising appeal, because, in her words, “The diversity of NESEA’s membership is a gift for us who have not yet found our own path. NESEA is the shelter of our community.”
I am grateful to my staff – at least three of whom, despite being handed a salary freeze this year, have decided to invest some of their discretionary income into NESEA membership because they believe deeply in what we’re about here, and they consider themselves a part of this community.
I am grateful to Paul Eldrenkamp, who confided in me that one of the happiest days of his life was the day that he left his last NESEA board meeting in the mid-1990s. He went and sat in his car for a few minutes and let out a freedom cry that others may have heard even from inside the building. Paul shared that the board as a group (not its individual members) was so dysfunctional, and mired in the day to day operation of the organization, that he couldn’t wait to get out. Well, Paul is a testament to how things have changed for the better. This year, not only is he chairing the BuildingEnergy Conference, and bringing a ton of new talent into the organization through his vast network, but he’s also teaching a BuildingEnergy Masters Series class on Passive House online, and running for the NESEA board!
I am grateful to the 20 or so NESEA members – some long timers, some newbies – who are helping us experiment with and launch active online communities so that they can learn together how best to apply systems thinking in their practices and what are the elements of a generative economy. These communities will serve as a forum in which NESEA members can share with each other what’s working (and what’s not) in service of a more sustainable built environment. Based on what we learn from these communities of practice, we’ll launch others in the new year – including one on Deep Energy Retrofits, one on Zero Net Energy Buildings, and possibly even one on our topic tonight, the Pretty Good House.
These examples barely scratch the surface of all we’ve accomplished together over the past year. And all of this is happening in the worst building environment in 20 years.
In many ways, last year represented the “perfect storm.” Almost everything that could have gone wrong financially, did. NESEA’s membership numbers and Sustainable Green Pages listings continued their steady decline since the housing market crash in 2009. BuildingEnergy registration and exhibitor numbers declined, despite a whopping 97% of our attendees saying that they would recommend the conference to a colleague. We lost substantial donations from two longtime donors whose funding focus shifted and whose portfolios suffered at the hands of a lackluster economy.
We knew before the year even started that we were going to run a deficit in Fiscal Year 2012. We even budgeted for it. We invested heavily in staff, hiring a membership coordinator and a communications coordinator. We also invested in our infrastructure, launching a new website, supported by a new, more nimble database. We knew it would take time for these investments to pay off. Unfortunately, the deficit we ran was larger than anticipated.
NESEA’s reason for being is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment. The rest of the industry is finally catching on as well.
Last year’s bottom line fails to tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story of the momentum we’re building, one practitioner at a time. It doesn’t tell the story of the quality of engagement within our membership, within the BuildingEnergy planning process, and at BE itself.
I truly believe that we’re planting the right seeds, and that if we continue to provide quality engagement experiences, the numbers will follow. I also know that we’ll continue to learn and adjust the plan as we go!
So I’m grateful. I’m invested in this organization and in this community, not just professionally, but also personally, as I complete my own deep energy retrofit and prepare to showcase my home on NESEA’s Green Building Open House tour, which will be held on October 13th throughout NESEA’s 10 states, from Maine all the way down to Delaware.
Now’s the time for you to invest as well. Invest in NESEA and in our future in a way that makes sense for you. If you’re not a member, join. If you are a member, consider donating or sponsoring above and beyond your membership contribution. Or give the gift of NESEA membership to a colleague to help grow our community.
If you’re a newcomer to our community, invest in your own professional development as you get to know us better. Enroll in one of our BuildingEnergy Masters Series courses and partake in high quality interactive educational content from the comfort of your home or office. Learn about zero net energy homes from Marc Rosenbaum, the man who’s probably engineered more of them than anybody else in the Northeast. Learn about Passive House from Mike Duclos and Paul Eldrenkamp, a member of the inaugural group of Passive House certified consultants in the U.S. Then connect with others in your class to share what you’re learning and create a community of practice that can meet in person at next year’s BuildingEnergy Conference.
Attend the Building Energy Conference, exhibit there, sponsor. Even better, help shape our content by joining the planning committee for the BuildingEnergy Conference. Register your most recent project for our Green Buildings Open House tour in October. Enter your best work in NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award to compete for our annual $10,000 prize. Submit an article for publication in BuildingEnergy Magazine, our peer-reviewed journal by and for sustainable energy professionals in the Northeast.
Invest in the community that is building your knowledge base, your practice, your career, and a more sustainable built environment.
Before I close, I’d like to thank a few people without whom this meeting would not have happened. First, thank you to our committee of locals who advised us on all of the nuts and bolts decisions we needed to make – from the beautiful location we are in to the buildings we should include on the tours earlier today to the Pretty Good House speaking program tonight. Those committee members include Matt Holden, Steve Konstantino, Dan Kolbert, and Rick Renner, among many others.
Next, I’d like to thank our sponsors for tonight – Sparhawk Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, and Thorton Tomasetti Fore Solutions. And a special thanks to sponsors Kaplan Thompson Architects and Pinnacle Windows, who are hosting a party after tonight’s meeting at Grace, a beautifully restored church and restaurant with an awesome looking menu!
Huge thanks also to Phil Kaplan of Kaplan Thompson Architects for advocating in favor of holding the meeting here in Portland and for connecting us with all the folks here who could help make it happen.
And finally, thank you to Kelsey Hobson, our summer intern from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. Kelsey came in at the beginning of the summer and flat out handled all the logistics for this meeting, with almost no guidance. She herded a group of benevolent but busy cats to score us this great location, and planned all of the building tours. She did such a great job that we decided to hire her permanently – or at least as permanently as she’ll have us. This is one NESEA emerging professional with a very bright future.
And now, I’d like to welcome to the stage NESEA board chair, James Petersen. James has been a huge champion of our work to “expand the choir,” and has supported these efforts personally by being a NESEA evangelist within his own professional network. James will share with you an update on where the board would like to see NESEA head, and on what your role might be in helping to create our future success.
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.
Buffalo, NY is leading the way with new form based zoning codes which will promote sustainable growth citywide.
Retrofitting for Resilience: Cities
Resilience of Cities: Be Urban. Be Environmental. Be Smart. Be Resilient. Be Sustainable.
This year in preparation for BE 13 at NESEA we are opening the dialogue to discuss the ultimate form of sustainability. Sustaining ourselves through good planning, smart building and ultimately being resilient to whatever our climate throws our way.
At NESEA BE12, the keynote speakers discussed the occupy movement, insulation, solar parking lots and city planning initiatives. All of these things discussed happen in cities, therefore we bring you the newest NESEA track for Building Energy 13 – Retrofitting for Resilience: The City Edition.
This new track can go anywhere because there is an enormous amount of material to cover and only 6 sessions. We wanted to take a moment to give your ideas as to where we would like to see this track go which is open but not limited to our ideas. We want YOUR ideas on retrofitting for resilience in our cities.
First thing, lets define resilience: the power or ability to return to the original form, position,etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.
Now here are our ideas for sessions organized by themes — presented to spark thinking. Go beyond these ideas and tell us what you want to do! The proposals are due June 15, 2012. You will find the complete RFP, describing the conference, and the response form at the NESEA website.
If you have any questions, please contact us.
Bernice Radle: Bernice@buffalo-energy.com
Robert Leaver: rleaver@newcommons.com
Ideas for sessions/discussions:
Urban Planning
Promoting energy efficient housing, smart growth and urbanism is the ultimate sustainable/resilient environment which can only happen in cities!
Energy Efficiency
Food production and distribution is important in our cities. Farmers Markets are ways of bringing fresh food into city centers.
Weather/Climate Change/Technologies
Case Studies/Results/General Initiatives
Recently Fred Unger shared links to a couple of TED talks with NESEA’s BuildingEnergy13 Planning Committee. Here they are:
Peter Diamandis – Abundance Is Our Future
Paul Gilding – The Earth is Full
While the debate these two talks represents is a critical and fascinating one, I kept wondering “How do we really bring it home to the NESEA community at BE13 to make sure the questions Gilding and Diamandis are asking inform the way we think about our day-to-day work?”
We are certainly more than capable of being the clever and creative community that Peter Diamandis describes. It’s also true, on the other hand, that the Big Problems that Paul Gilding describes seem very real to a lot of us in the NESEA community. But the bottom line is that even the NESEA practitioners who are most pessimistic about resource depletion seem pretty eager to get up and get to work in the morning to solve problems for their clients, as far as I can tell. Maybe that’s because active engagement is a great antidote for despair—I certainly didn’t see any evidence of despair at BE12 this past March, only of active engagement.
Here’s what I think is the best way to have the Gilding-Diamandis debate at BE13: Make sure our content is accurate and reality-based; avoid confirmation bias in our selection of topics and speakers; focus on the areas where theory meets practice so that our theory stays grounded in marketplace realities and our practice is informed by a larger context that keeps it in the category of “solution” rather than “problem”. —Paul
Can’t wait for BuildingEnergy12? Neither could we.
Thankfully, one of our BE12 Gold Sponsors and NESEA Members, Renewable Sales, has volunteered to host a BE-caliber session at their showroom in Holliston, MA, February 16, 2012, starting at 5:30pm. RSVP here.
An evening of networking and expert information …
and it’s free! (And there will be food!)
The evening will feature a discussion “Understanding Risks and Rewards: A Conversation on Community Solar,” facilitated by The Cadmus Group, featuring a case study from the Town of Natick and from the City of Medford. MA Department of Energy Resources will speak to its solar programs (e.g., SolarizeMass with MassCEC, SunShot Program grant), as well as support that it can and has provided to Massachusetts municipalities.
[hide-this-part morelink="Click here to read more about the speakers..."]
Erin Sweet, The Cadmus Group
Erin Sweet leads The Cadmus Group’s efforts to support local communities with their renewable energy projects. Since 2010, Ms. Sweet has provided owner’s agent technical assistance services to eight Massachusetts cities and towns on behalf of the state Department of Energy Resources. She has assembled lessons learned from Cadmus’ owner’s agent work into a blog for communities interested in renewable energy. Ms. Sweet has evaluated the costs and benefits of water utility renewable energy projects for the U.S. EPA, and created a roadmap to drive renewables development in South Carolina’s Central Midlands region. Ms. Sweet holds an M.A. in urban and environmental policy and planning from Tufts University, and degrees in microbiology and English from the University of Florida.
Meg Lusardi, MA Department of Energy Resources,
Green Communities Division
Meg is the Director for the Green Communities Division, the organization within the MA Department of Energy Resources that serves as the hub for all municipalities on all matters related to energy. Meg was tasked in August 2008 to launch the development and implementation of the Green Communities Designation and Grant Program, the landmark program for the Division, that has led to 86 municipalities in MA being designated Green Communities. Meg joined DOER in July 2005 and previously worked with the Renewable Energy team on all matters related to renewables development in MA. She previously served as the Chief of Operations for Project Hope, a non-profit in Dorchester, and as a Project Manager at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Bob Bois, Environmental Compliance Officer, Town of Natick
Bob has worked in the environmental field on the public side for over 35 years. Presently, Bob is the Environmental Compliance Officer (ECO) for the Town of Natick – a position he’s held for the past 10 years. As the ECO for Natick, Bob is responsible for coordinating Town-wide compliance with all applicable federal and state environmental laws applicable to Town operations and plays a key role in implementing environmental stewardship and pollution prevention projects Town-wide. As Natick’s ECO, Bob has helped the Town achieve ISO 14001 certification for the environmental management system at its water treatment plant in 2007, secured designation from the state DOER as Green Community in May 2010, and helped negotiate two Power Purchase Agreements to install a 1.08 MW solar array system on the roof of six town buildings by the spring of 2012. Prior to working for Natick, Bob worked 25 years with the state DEP in various positions including the Acting Director for the Office of Enforcement. Bob has a BS in biology form Merrimack College and a MS in Engineering from Tufts University.
A representative from the City of Medford (to be confirmed)
With introductions from:
Kevin Price, CEO, Renewable Sales
Kevin Price is CEO of Renewable Sales of Holliston Massachusetts. Mr. Price bring 30 years of construction sector experience to his position, predominantly in the role of wholesale distributor of mechanical equipment. In 2008, he opened a small warehouse to service the fledgling solar market in the MetroWest region of Massachusetts. Since then, he has grown the company to keep pace with the fast expanding market. Renewable Sales now has 3 divisions; the original distribution company that recently expanded operations to a 20,000SF facility in Holliston, as well as two manufacturing divisions. In Dallas, Texas the company manufactures its American Choice PV modules. The third division, Constellation Solar Mounts, manufactures solar racking for commercial and utility scale projects.
Mr. Price is a native of Massachusetts and enjoys New England’s diverse cultural and seasonal offerings. Mr. Price supports a number of charitable organizations on a local and regional basis.
…and our own Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director, Northeast Sustainable Energy Association[/hide-this-part]
Here is the essential information:
| What: NESEA invites you to “Understanding Risks and Rewards: A Conversation on Community Solar” presented by The Cadmus Group, and hosted by Renewable Sales Where: Renewable Sales, 35 Jeffrey Avenue, Holliston, MA 01746 When: Thursday, February 16th, 2012; 5:30 – 8:30pm RSVP: http://goo.gl/iKWtB – maximum 60 attendees – so do not delay! (and please let us know if you need to cancel) |
We hope to see you there!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me: rheldt@nesea.org or 413-774-6051 ext. 20
This is was originally posted at EnergyEmporium by Kim Quirk
“That’s the title of the talk I am going to do at the NESEA (Northeast Sustainable Energy Association) conference in Boston in March 2012. The conference, BuildingEnergy 12, will be held at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston on March 6-8. There are 10 different tracks of workshops on “renewables and high performance buildings”. Check it out. You can get a ton of information at this conference.
I was very excited to have my presentation selected. All the work we’ve been doing on the renovation of my building has been well documented and I will have a years worth of real data and results by then. I applied to present at this conference last year but my project schedule slipped and my move-in date was too late to get any real feedback as to the performance of the house, so they asked me to re-apply this year.
Ok… so the good news is that I was selected for presentation. The bad news is that the house isn’t performing as well as it should at this point. There are things we are actively analyzing and debugging. So when I got the news that I was on the schedule, I called the session chair to discuss some of the issues and see if they wanted to retract their offer. “Not at all”, I was told. “We expect an audience that understands how difficult it is to achieve zero net energy and we learn more from the problems than the successes”. She assured me that presenting the results with details about issues would be a good session.
So, as I pull together data, information, pictures for this talk I will also put it out there on this blog. It would be great to get some feedback before the conference so I can be ready for the hard questions.
There were 4 goals for this renovation:
You can get more details on these goals by clicking on 78 Main St – Renovation.
I’ll start addressing the 3rd goal in this post since it has been very easy to measure: This house has no fossil fuels. I don’t have an oil tank or oil bill, no propane tank or gas bills, no fireplace, wood stove or wood bills.
But — This house is on the grid and I DO have an electric bill. My electric company is National Grid. Their electricity is made up of about 36% natural gas, 15% coal, 26% nuclear, 10% oil, and 13% other fuels (mostly renewable). So that is not good. My intention is to offset all the electricity we use with local solar PV panels. Right now I am measuring the electrical use so I can design the right size array. The good news is that weather data and insolation (how much sun we get here in NH) from the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) is pretty accurate so I will be able determine the size of the array based on my use. I didn’t want to put the array in place, though, until I have a good estimate of electrical usage. More on that in an upcoming blog.”
All photos by Matthew Cavanaugh Photography unless otherwise credited.
