Pat Dundon, owner of The Insulation Man, offers a presentation at the Hubbard Auditorium.
Pat Dundon, owner of The Insulation Man, offers a presentation at the Hubbard Auditorium.
Pat Dundon, owner of The Insulation Man, offers a presentation at the Hubbard Auditorium.
Wednesday evening, May 13, saw 25 locals turn out at the Hubbard Auditorium in Owego to get practical tips on how to take control of personal energy consumption. Gay Canough, owner of ETM Solar Works, Endicott, shared her personal list of actions she’s taken to lower her energy use. Topping that list is reducing her energy use, or load. The underlying principle behind this priority action, and all of the other actions in her list, is that the cheapest energy going is the energy you don’t use.
Pat Dundon, owner of The Insulation Man, Binghamton, stepped through examples of the effects of poorly insulated homes, where money flows out of a building through heat loss in the winter. For example, simple but often overlooked fixes, like ensuring that duct joints are sealed, makes a sizable difference in lowering energy use and cost.
While Canough and Dundon covered topics that have become at least somewhat familiar to home owners, Joe Keyes of Heat Tek, Endicott, discussed a topic that has long been considered pretty much “maxed out”, with only minor efficiency gains achievable: heating and cooling one’s home.
Keyes gave an overview of the progress that’s been made in the field of heating and cooling; specifically air- and ground-source heat pumps. While heat pumps have been around for a long time, their cost and limited ability to generate heat in brutal Southern Tier winter temperatures have made their use for most homeowners unrealistic.
Keyes stepped attendees through the major changes that have been made to heat pumps, including the introduction of a hyper heat unit that heats when the temperature outside drops to -13 degrees F (after that the unit still runs, with reduced BTUs). The heat pumps save up to 2 to 3 times the energy used in traditional furnaces. He gave the rather stunning example of Japan, where 90 percent of homes there have heat pumps, resulting in a 40 percent drop in load on their energy grid.
Connect that technology with solar power, and one is pretty much free of paying for energy from utilities. That is exactly what Dr. Canough is in the midst of doing. She has sized the number of solar panels needed to power heating and cooling in her own home and finds that she can add them to the other panels she already has installed on the roof of her small house – powered by the sun.
That’s taking control of her energy future. That’s saving big bucks. And that’s energy independence.
This presentation review was written by Janet Thomas of RAFT (Residents Allied for the Future of Tioga), sponsor of “Taking Control of Our Energy Future While Saving Big Bucks”.
