Peggy Vlerebome, Madison Courier Staff Writer
Duke Energy's only solar power system in a single-family house in Indiana has been installed at a home on Thomas Hill Road and is providing about one-fourth of the electricity used by Dr. Frank Hare and his daughter Sara Hare.
Ten south-facing solar panels were installed on the roof. Their system is connected to Duke's power lines, so the solar power they generate flows into the electric grid. They do not have batteries for storage of the electricity they produce since it goes into the grid.
A computerized monitor in the basement - which goes into an energy-saving sleep mode until it is rapped with a knuckle - keeps track of how much solar power is produced by the Hares and how many pounds of greenhouse gases they avoid putting into the atmosphere. Coal-fired power plants and gasoline-powered vehicles produce greenhouse gases.
The Hares pay Duke only for the traditional electricity they use.
If the Hares' solar power system ever produces more electricity than they use, their electric meter will spin backward and Duke will give them a credit on their electric bill, in effect buying their excess electricity to put out on the grid for other customers to use.
The Hares were interested in having the new technology of solar power in their home, which is believed to have been built around 1840. They had heard that Duke was promoting solar, and got hooked into a program that is probably going to end by next year. Duke paid $17,000 for the equipment and the Hares paid $4,000 for the installation by Third Sun Solar and Wind of Athens, Ohio.
Duke also recently installed solar power at low-income apartments in Bloomington and has installed solar in at least 10 Indiana schools, none in this area, to raise awareness of solar power. Since 2005, Duke Energy/Indiana has spent about $300,000 on these solar installations, said Angeline Protogere, spokeswoman for Duke in Indiana. They were all educational programs to raise awareness, Duke officials said. The company is seeking regulatory approval to do different things in the name of energy efficiency, so the officials do not know what programs will be available next and whether solar will be part of it. But the program like the Hares were in is unlikely to be repeated, they said.
Telling the world
The Hares are waiting for installation of a computer chip that will enable anyone in the world to log on to www.fatspaniel.com and check how much solar energy the Hares produce and how much greenhouse gas they avoid, with the data updated every 20 minutes. Fat Spaniel provides information services for the renewable energy industry. Customers' usage data is shown on the Web site under the tab "live sites," and they are listed under the name of the installer, ThirdSun.
Sara Hare finds it a bit strange that people all over the world will be able to check out how the Hares in Madison, Indiana, are using electricity.
The more the Hares rely on solar power, the lower their Duke bill will be and the quicker they will start getting a return on their investment in the installation.
Installation of their system was finished late afternoon July 31, so they have almost a month of data. They are averaging 10 kilowatts a day of solar power, which is about one-fourth of their average use, based on past Duke Energy bills. Their electric bill last month, before they started using solar, was $158.29.
Ten kilowatts a day would be enough to run the clothes dryer for 2 1/2 hours, Sara Hare said. They bought an Energy Star refrigerator; it uses 1.5 kilowatts of electricity a day.
She has learned that the drying cycle of the dishwasher eats up a lot of electricity, as does the clothes dryer.
Their home is steam-heated using propane to heat the water. It is cooled with screen doors and windows, and fans.
The Hares have become more conscious about electricity. For their solar panels to have a bigger impact, Sara Hare said, they have to do more to conserve. As she made that observation, she reached over and turned off the printer next to her computer.
Using solar energy is part of a lifestyle for the Hares that is greener than many people experience. "I think we're both environmentally area and worried about global warming," said Sara Hare, a sociology professor at Indiana University Southeast. "We try to recycle." She laughed and said that recycling at their house actually is a "massive" undertaking that has taken over a garage.
""My conscience hurts for throwing so much away and filling up the junk pile (landfill)," said Frank Hare, a retired Madison physician. As part of his environmental awareness, he recently bought a Toyota Prius hybrid car.
Making an impact without solar panels
People who do not have solar panels still can have an impact on how much electricity they use, and the first and best things they should do is switch all of the lightbulbs in their houses to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and buy a programmable thermostat, said John D. Langston, product manager in the Products & Services Group at Duke Energy Corp.'s headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.
He and Christy Smith, manager of renewables in the Products & Services Group, visited the Hares this week to check out their system. They were accompanied by Leticia Vestile, who is in marketing for Duke in Indiana. She grew up in Hanover. They also visited the apartments in Bloomington that just got a solar installation.
The Hares' solar panels fit flat against the roof. More prominent than the panels on the rooftop is the hardware for the monitoring computer in the basement. Some systems place the panels at a 30-degree angle. Langston said experiments and underway and appear to show that there is little difference between flat and angled panels in the amount of solar power that is produced. There also are experiments with solar panels that move to follow the sun across the sky, he said.
Sara Hare had e-mailed a picture of their house taken from their pasture, showing not only the solar panels on the roof but also flowers and their columned old house.
Langston liked the picture and what it conveyed to a public wary about the aesthetics of putting panels on their roofs. "It really helps create a comfort zone for folks," he said. "You show them a picture like this and they say, 'That's not bad.'"
Copyright 2024, The Madison Courier