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March 8, 2007
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Green machine The oil is drying up. The water is getting dirtier. If you don’t do your part to stop global warming, Al Gore will personally come to your house and unplug your Internet access. Very few people actively try to be wasteful, but often economics or convenience gets in the way of being friendly to the environment. Sure, you’d love to be a little more ecologically conscious, but not if you have to go way out of your way or spend a lot more. That’s changing. State House Bill 873, currently under consideration in the Science, Technology and Energy Committee, encourages the use of renewable energy sources, and businesses are starting to realize that there’s more than just good press to be had from green policies — there’s money. The grassroots green movement may be centered in California, but a number of southern New Hampshire businesses are focusing in on providing environmentally friendly products to the supply chain, all the way from manufacturers and distributors to everyday consumers. Energy from the sun In concept, it’s simple. In practice, there’s a lot of advanced manufacturing involved. Most commercially available photovoltaic solar cells are only about 10 to 15 percent efficient, meaning that only a small portion of the energy hitting a panel is actually transformed into electricity. Different materials and construction methods have produced cells as efficient as 40 percent, though. Since bright sunlight provides as much as 1,000 watts of pure energy per square meter, there’s a lot of power to be collected for only the initial cost of building collection and storage devices. Headquartered in Merrimack, GT Solar Incorporated builds the equipment that other companies use to make those devices. Their offerings range from turnkey fabrication lines, sets of equipment to turn silicon into solar modules start to finish, to custom furnaces for growing the silicon crystals in the first place. Their in-house experts help companies get up and running to produce solar modules or supply equipment to existing manufacturers. GT Solar also has affiliates in Germany, Italy, India, Korea and Taiwan, and recently announced the opening of sales offices in Shanghai and Beijing. They changed their name from GT Equipment Technologies late last year because the vast majority of their business was in the solar industry. Now, are you, dear reader, going to be one of GT Solar’s direct customers? Unless you own some fairly substantial industrial space, no, probably not. You may very well buy solar modules manufactured with GT Solar equipment, though, and some of it might come from a few other southern New Hampshire companies. Solar Components Corporation of Manchester claims to have “The World’s Most Comprehensive Catalog of Solar Products” on their Web site, www.solar-components.com. It’s not hard to believe; whether you’re incorporating passive solar heating into a new home or building a totally off-the-grid solar electricity system, they can sell you the stuff you need. Take their passive solar water heater kit. In concept, it’s pretty simple: a 30-gallon water tank enclosed in plywood with a solar collector panel at an angle on top. It’s purely thermal, not a photovoltaic panel, so there’s no energy lost in conversion. Similar collectors, made from aluminum, a fiberglass glazing and insulating material, can be used to heat the air in a room. The company does offer a variety of photovoltaic modules, by themselves or integrated into specific systems, like generators, fans, lights and even solar roof shingles. If your focus is more on smaller energy needs — portable electronics, batteries, that kind of thing — you can check out Sundance Solar Products Inc. at www.SundanceSolar.com. It was started in Warner in 1995 to reduce the number of batteries thrown into landfills. Now they offer not just rechargeable batteries with accompanying solar chargers, but larger solar energy kits for powering everything from cell phones and laptops to boats and RVs. “We do well at dominating our categories in the search engines,” said Ed Bender, president of Sundance Solar. Their niche, he said, was selling solar power to consumers who aren’t necessarily tree huggers but want power for their small devices away from the grid or just on the go. The company also sells backup power systems, consisting of portable battery packs with standard outlets and solar panels. There’s even a whole section called “Solar Gifts & Gadgets” with somewhat less practical uses for solar energy, like the Solar Powered Electrical Windmill, which sits on your favorite boss’s desk and spins away, or the Swamp Eyes Solar Powered Floating Alligator to scare people or predators away from your favorite body of water. Sundance Solar used to maintain a retail store in Warner, but Bender said the market just wasn’t there, especially in a small, northern state. “Retail solar products is not where it’s at in New Hampshire,” he said. “There’s not even solar stores in Tucson, Ariz.” His online sales are thriving, though. The Web site has sold to 75 different countries and 30,000 different customers and is visited by more than a million people every year. Most of the sales go to the Sun Belt of the United States, but there have been shipments to all 50 states. Bender said he even supplied a National Science Foundation expedition to Antarctica that discovered two new dinosaur species a few years ago. Poetic justice perhaps, since most of their compatriots turned into oil millennia ago? Fuel from plants Amelot Alternative Energy, Inc., a subsidiary of Amelot Holdings of Cheyenne, Wyo., announced last year that it would lease a facility at 164 Burke St., Nashua, for the purpose of producing 10 million gallons of biodiesel per year. It is the first of 50 such facilities in the company’s ambitious plan. Amelot Holdings moved its headquarters to Nashua in November, along with a 15,000-gallon stainless steel reactor tank. The company currently plans to start its own production in May. Until then, it’s purchasing 20,000 gallons of B99.9 soy methyl ester biodiesel — basically, 99.9 percent biodiesel as opposed to the more common B20 blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent petroleum diesel — from existing refineries in the Midwest and Mid Atlantic to supply its New England customers. The company had originally hoped to start its own production by the end of 2006, but redesigned its new facility to increase its throughput and overall operating expense. “It was a hard decision at the end of 2006 to reorganize and push back the planned opening date,” said Amelot Holdings president Allen Giles in January. “This redesign will produce more product, more efficiently with far less total capital, equipment, operating and maintenance costs.” If you want to make your diesel automobile even more earthy-crunchy, you can convert it to run on used vegetable oil. One of the most popular suppliers of complete conversion kits, GreaseCar.com, is based in Massachusetts. To get in touch with an installer in New Hampshire, you contact Dan Barraford in Barnstead, head of Our Town Energy Alliance, a consumer buying group that pools purchases of oil and propane for most of New Hampshire and parts of Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts. He figured since he was in the energy business already, he should look into grease cars. “The way you have to look at conservation is, there’s no big answer that solves everything,” Barraford said. About half of waste cooking oil, he said, is already reclaimed as an ingredient in animal feed for livestock. The other half goes into landfills. That amount of grease could run about four percent of the cars in America, he said. The conversion kits are really auxiliary fuel systems, because regular diesel (or biodiesel) is required to start the car, warm it up and turn it off. Generally, an extra tank is installed in a vehicle’s trunk and connected to the existing fuel system. While Barraford is listed on GreaseCar’s Web site, he hasn’t yet connected anyone with one of the mechanics doing the actual conversion. He also has his own ideas of what should be in the conversion kit — ideas he incorporated into his own vegetable-oil-powered car, a 1987 Mercedes. “I love the tanks that GreaseCar makes,” he said, comparing the metal fuel tank to the plastic ones offered in competitors’ kits. One thing they all get wrong, though? “They all like to run the diesel system and the veggie system on the same pump. My way of thinking is, for another hundred bucks, you can get another fuel pump.” That second fuel pump is used just for the vegetable oil. He also has an instant heater at the front of the car to ensure that the vegetable oil is the right temperature after its trip from the heated tank at the back. “It’s a very simple plumbing job, in a way,” Barraford said. “You’re paying $800 for the kit. What’s $200 more for the insurance?” Vegetable oil is a better solution for New Hampshire’s climate than biodiesel, which turns to gel at low temperatures unless mixed with a good amount of petroleum. Vegetable oil requires heating as well, but as Barraford figured it, since biodiesel requires more refining and is more expensive, why not go with the cheaper option? Design from everywhere Meredith Gonzales opened Your Home, Your World at 138 North Main St., Concord, on Nov. 8, 2006. In the four winter months she’s run the store, smaller gift items have been the most popular — things like locally made candles or all-natural, biodegradable cleaning products. She’s seeing another part of her business pick up as spring approaches. “The real heart of my store is the home renovation area,” she said. From cork and bamboo flooring that doesn’t deplete forests to low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paints with fumes that are far less toxic than normal paints, the offerings are aimed at those looking for modern convenience and style without modern problems. Those contemplating less drastic home redesigns are taking a look at the organic mattresses Gonzales has on display. One kind is organic cotton covered in natural wool from free-range sheep, making it naturally fire-retardant, dust mite-repellent and temperature-regulating. There’s also a 97 percent natural rubber mattress you can try out; only a bit of zinc and soda ash are added to “give it a little fluff,” Gonzales said. While she hasn’t sold many of the mattresses yet — they must be custom made to order and delivered — they have generated a lot of interest. “I even had a lady from Canada come to lie on them,” she said. Gonzales also recently put up a display of recycled glassware. On one level are the artistic TranSglass vases, made in Guatemala and distributed through fair trade practices; on another, the wine and beer bottles their glass comes from. Items from the product line are part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, but they’re pretty affordable. Gonzales plans to celebrate Earth Day and Arbor Day in April by giving out free seedlings to hardwood buyers. For more help with your home (or business, for that matter), KW Management in Nashua specializes in making buildings as efficient as possible. They perform energy audits on existing buildings to pinpoint any problem areas where, for example, heat is leaking out. They also do computer modeling to determine the ideal HVAC system to balance performance and energy usage. Once you’ve gathered the info, KW can sell you all kinds of green power systems, from geothermal heat pumps to wind turbines. Ain’t technology great? It got us into this polluted mess, but it just might help us get out. Go green yourself Green for green The Public Utilities Commission requires net metering, which lets homeowners connect a small-scale electricity generation system to the grid and run the meter backward when it is producing more than the property is consuming. If the property consumes less than it generates in a billing period, even if all the consumption happens when the site is not actually generating its own energy, the bill is $0. State statute allows municipalities to establish property tax exemptions for some kinds of renewable energy installations. The following cities and towns in the area offer some property tax exemptions for solar power (both thermal hot water and photovoltaic electric), wind energy and/or central wood-fired heating system. Check with your local officials for details. Amherst: Solar Source: New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning, www.nh.gov/oep. |
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