|| Energy 101

Energy Efficiency 101

Energy Retrofit 101

Renewable Energy 101

Energy Efficiency 101: A Step By Step Guide

Step 1: Understand your energy use and energy costs

Step 2: Get an energy audit or home rating

Step 3: Improve your home

Step 4: Track your energy use and costs

Step 1: Understand your energy use and energy costs

Take a look at your utility bill. This is a great way to get picture of your energy use. Is it high or low? Where are your likely areas of improvement? You can tell a lot from your energy bill.. Understanding Your Utility Bill PDF

Here are some averages to compare your bill to:

U.S. averages: 920 kWh/month, 82 therms/month

Summit County averages:803 kWh/month, 111 therms/month

Know this: Energy efficiency is the cheepest way to reduce kWh used and carbon emissions.

Average household and business energy use. Where do you use your energy? Remember, if you do not have adequate attic insulation you are heating much more air than you need to - this equates to too much 'space heating,' because that warm air is leaving the house too quickly.

Offices and other businesses generally spend most of their money in lighting buildings.

Step 2: Get an energy audit or home rating

The best way to determine what upgrade will be most effective, and cost efficient, for your home is to get an energy audit.

A cold and drafty home, rooms that are too hot or too cold, and high energy bills are all common issues for homeowners. Installing a new heating system, buying replacement windows, or adding more insulation may fix part of the problem, but the path to better results is by implementing an integrated "whole-house" approach that looks at your home as a system. This is what you can expect from an Energy Audit, whole-house perspective from an independent third party inspection specific to your home.

Your Energy Auditor will spend 2-3 hours with you going through your home taking a close look at attics, crawl spaces, basements and mechanical equipment to gain a whole-house perspective of your home. Along the way the auditor will share observations and insights where your home has room for improvement. This time is very much a learning experience for home owners, giving them insight into how there home and its "systems" work together as a whole.

The results of your Energy Audit will be compiled into a comprehensive report that will address issues specific to your home and detail strategies to improve your homes energy performance. This report can be used to map out where to spend money on efficiency upgrades over a short or long period of time.

Diagnosing the Problem

Step 3: Improve your home

Energy Retrofit 101

Some common recommendations for cost-effective energy improvements are:

Sealing Air Leaks and Adding Insulation
Many air leaks in homes are fairly obvious, such as around windows, doors, and electrical outlets. But others, like those in attics, fireplaces, around chimneys, and through recessed lighting fixtures, are often the more significant sources of energy loss in a home. Sealing air leaks is critical to improving the overall efficiency of your home and will make your heating and cooling system perform better. Along with air sealing, your Auditor may recommend that you add insulation. Many older homes are not well-insulated, and some have no insulation at all. Properly installed insulation in walls, floors, and attics provides for more even temperatures throughout the house and results in a quieter, more comfortable home that is easier to heat.

Sealing Ductwork
Many homes have leaky ductwork and poor air flow, resulting in stuffy and uncomfortable rooms — regardless of the thermostat setting. The Energy Auditor may recommend sealing your home’s ducts with mastic, metal tape or spray-on sealant, and balancing the duct system to optimize air flow to all rooms. Insulating ductwork in attics, crawlspaces, and some basements can also help to ensure that your home will be more comfortable.

Improving Heating Systems
If your furnace or boiler is more than 10 years old, your Auditor may recommend that you replace it with a unit that has earned the ENERGY STAR label. Installed correctly, these high-efficiency units can save up to 20 percent on heating costs. But when it comes to heating equipment, bigger is not always better. A properly-sized unit will make your home more comfortable by providing more consistent temperatures control.

The Energy Auditor should also test combustion equipment, such as your furnace and hot water heater, to ensure that it is operating and venting properly.

Upgrading Lighting and Appliances
Energy used for lighting, entertainment equipment and appliances can account for half of your home's total utility bill. As a result, the Energy Auditor may recommend ENERGY STAR qualified products, such as refrigerators, dishwashers, electronic equipment, light fixtures, and compact fluorescent bulbs. An energy- and water-efficient hot water heating system may also be recommended.

Step 4: Track your energy use and costs

Greenquest is a free online tool that will give you simple analysis of your energy use. It works best when you have one building to manage.

For multiple buildings and especialy if you are a public entity, try EPA Portfolio Manager.

Don't mind paying? Try Energy CAP.

||Renewable Energy 101

Renewable energy resources: Energy resources which are naturally replenishing in a relatively short period of time, such as solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy, biomass, and hydropower.

About Renewable Energy In Colorado

Solar

Wind

Biomass

Geothermal

||About Renewables in Colorado

Utility-scale renewable energy potential

SB07-91, Renewable Energy Development Infrastructure (REDI) Report, 2009 Governor's Energy Office

View the full REDI Report for Colorado PDF. This report addresses the following questions (among other things):
What is the basis for the proposed 20x20 goal in the REDI Report?
What is Colorado’s CO2 emission profile, and how much is attributable to the electricity sector?
Why is transmission so important in how the electric power system operates?
What is the history of the Rocky Mountain region’s electric generation and fuel
type?
How does population growth affect thedemand for electric power?
How can demand-side measures help meet the 20x20 goal?
What is distributed generation, and how is that concept emerging in Colorado?
Can demand-side measures mitigate or eliminate the need for new central power stations and new transmission?

What about us? Why is distributed generation a good thing for us here in the mountains?

With distributed generation projects in Summit or Lake Counties, power is produced and used locally, which increases energy independence, local jobs, and reduces the necessity and cost of energy transmission.  And the best part is that the energy production process is clean. 

||Solar

Solar Gardens

PV versus Solar Thermal

Solar Potential in Summit and Lake County

What's the difference between solar thermal and solar PV? Typically, solar photovoltaic panels, or PV panels, are used to displace electricity used for lighting and appliances. Solar thermal can be used to displace natural gas use in many forms. Solar thermal, while it has received less attention in the past several years, has great potential in Colorado. Colorado is ranked as the #1 state for soalr thermal potential in the U.S., due to the perfect combination of warm sunny days and cool nights.

You can do both, of course. Solar PV and solar thermal panels can share space on roof-tops.

Concentrating Solar Potential by County

Yes, the sun is very powerful here in Summit and Lake Counties. High elevation combined with cold temperatures, actually aid in effeciency of power production. The opposite is true of wind power production at high elevation.

Summit County, Colorado

Lake County, Colorado

||Wind

Currently, wind turbines of any kind are not allowed by Summit County's zoning ordinances.

Wind power generation is very site specific or micro-climate dependant. Turbine size, type, and height are determined by the characteristics of the site. There are many types of wind turbines but most turbines are rated by the energy they produce in a 28 mile per hour wind. There are horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs).

MOST locations in Ssummit, Lake and Park Counties are clarified as class 1 or 2, which is poor or marginal. Many mountain locals think the wind is very powerful at their location, but in most cases, the consistancy is not enough to classify as fair wind potential. Exceptions may include: ridges and mountain tops.

For more information about turbines, commercial and residential applications, check out Innovative Energy's wind website.

Wind Potential in Colorado

Summit County Wind Potential

Lake County Wind Potential

||Biomass

Biomass Basics, Colorado Renewable Energy Society

Report by Colorado State Senate Majority Ad Hoc Energy Task Force, Approved by the Colorado Renewable Energy Society Board of Directors - October 25, 2001:

Recent studies indicate that Colorado has a fair biomass resource potential. An estimated 5.2 billion kWh of electricity could be generated using renewable biomass fuels in Colorado. This is enough electricity to fully supply the annual needs of 521,000 average homes, or 42 percent of the residential electricity use in Colorado. These biomass resource supply figures are based on estimates for five general categories of biomass: urban residues, mill residues, forest
residues, agricultural residues, and energy crops. Of these potential biomass supplies and the quantities cited below, most forest residues, agricultural residues, and energy crops are not presently economic for energy use. New tax credits or incentives, increased monetary valuation of environmental benefits, or sustained high prices for fossil fuels could make these fuel sources more economic in the future.

Wood is the most commonly used biomass fuel for heat and power. The most economic sources of wood fuels are usually urban residues and mill residues. Urban residues used for power generation consist mainly of chips and grindings of clean, non-hazardous wood from construction activities, woody yard and right-of-way trimmings, and discarded wood products such as waste pallets and crates. Local governments can encourage segregation of clean wood from other forms of municipal waste to help ensure its re-use for mulch, energy, and other markets. Using clean and segregated biomass materials for electricity generation recovers their energy value while avoiding landfill disposal. Mill residues, such as sawdust, bark, and wood scraps from paper, lumber, and furniture manufacturing operations are typically very clean and can be used as fuel by a wide range of biomass energy systems. The estimated supplies of urban
and mill residues available for energy uses in Colorado are 158,000 and 180,000 dry tons per year, respectively.

Forest residues include underutilized logging residues, imperfect commercial trees, dead wood, and other non commercial trees that need to be thinned from crowded, unhealthy, fireprone forests. Because of their sparseness and remote location, these residues are usually more expensive to recover than urban and mill residues. The estimated supply of forest residues for Colorado is 720,000 dry tons per year.

Local Projects: TBA

||Geothermal

The greatest commercial potential for large-scale geothermal power was in northern Nevada. Studies have shown that Colorado may hold significant geothermal resources, although further exploration is necessary to fully quantify the actual geothermal potential. The zones identified in Colorado coincided with the best wind and solar GDAs identified in the SB07-91 Report (Governor's Energy Office, 2009 REDI report).

Colorado Renewable Energy Society on geothermal.

From the Renewable Energy Committee report prepared for the Chairman of the Colorado State Senate Majority Ad Hoc Energy Task Force, and approved by the CRES Board of Directors, October 25, 2001.

Two types of geothermal resources are being tapped commercially: hydrothermal fluid resources and earth energy. Hydrothermal fluid resources (reservoirs of steam or very hot water) are well suited for electricity generation. Earth energy, the heat contained in soil and rocks at shallow depths, is excellent for direct use and geothermal heat pumps. Direct-use applications require moderate temperatures; geothermal heat pumps can operate with low-temperature resources. 

Colorado has high-temperature resources that are suitable for electricity generation. Every geothermal site has a unique set of characteristics and operating conditions. For example, the fluid produced from a geothermal well can be steam, brine, or a mixture of the two; and the temperature and pressure of the resource can vary considerably from site to site. Therefore, a plant design must be carefully matched to the type and temperature of a particular resource. 

Direct-use resources can be used to provide heat in a variety of applications. The versatility and inexhaustibility of these resources make it attractive for municipalities, as well as individuals and businesses. Geothermal heat pumps are similar to conventional air conditioners and refrigerators. But whereas air conditioners and refrigerators discharge waste heat into the air, geothermal heat pumps discharge waste heat into the ground during hot weather and extract useful heat from the ground during cold weather. They are among the most efficient, and therefore least polluting, heating, cooling, and water-heating systems available.