Being 'green' is in the news. In fact, it's in the news so much that I think people might be missing the point, and 'green-washing' is now at large. That's why we prefer the term SUSTAINABILITY. I once put SUSTAINABLE as a bonus word on my 5th graders' spelling list, and it generated quite a discussion; to put it simply, the students were totally unfamiliar with the concept.

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. It can refer to how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. And for humans, sustainability really means that our lifestyle has the potential for long-term maintenance of well being. Sustainability has environmental, economic, and social dimensions. It's a very big topic, and that's important to realize, because as a human race we aren't all of a sudden going to start living sustainably overnight. Sustainability is a process, we aren't going to be experts at every aspect, and it will be overwhelming if we expect ourselves to be perfect at all of it. But since sustainability is such a big topic, it's very easy to start somewhere! POWERFULLY GREEN is a solar installation company, but at our core, we believe that it's all about sustainable living. Here are some of the areas we are learning about.

Energy Conservation:

When we got started learning about solar power, the first obvious thing to do was learn about our electricity consumption. Do you know how many kilowatt hours (kWh) you consume at your home? We didn't. Every bill you get from your utility tells not only how much money you owe, but also lots of information about your energy consumption. Knowledge is power, so learning about your energy consumption is the first step to becoming a conscientious energy user. We learned that our average monthly electricity consumption was 600 kWh. Since then we've learned that the average Minnesota household uses 850 kWh/month. Some people might assume that if you use that much electricity, you must 'need' that much electricity. But in our case, yes we were always careful not to leave lights on, but we really didn't know much about where that 600 kWh/month was going, so we set out to learn. Here are some of the highlights --

• One light per person. This is an easy rule to institute, and even very young children can get used to this concept.
• Change out your incandescent lightbulbs; start with the four you use the most. Compact fluorescent bulbs come in a variety of intensity and color (Kelvin) ratings, be sure to choose one that meets your lighting needs. As a rule of thumb, you need 1/4 the watts of a 'regular' incandescent lightbulb, so to replace a 60w bulb you need a 15w CFL. If you are replacing a 100w bulb, a 15w CFL won't do it, you need a 25w CFL. Soft white and day-light colors are different.
• Darkness doesn't mean dangerous! We decided that we really didn't need those porch lights on, even as dusk turned to night. Sure, if someone comes to the door we turn on the porch lights. Yes, if a family member is coming home late we turn on the porch light to help them see to get inside. But we don't put the porch lights on just because it is dark, do you?
• Phantom loads -- these are electricity loads that we thought were off anyway. It used to look like LED-Christmas when we went to bed at night, and all those little LED lights indicate an electronic that's not really off. Now it's almost dark when we go to bed. We still have a carbon monoxide detector, an alarm clock, and the clock on the microwave, but we've figured out how to turn off all of those other phantom loads. A Kill-A-Watt meter is very helpful to learning about loads at their point of use.
• Power strips are very helpful in turning off phantom loads! You don't need one with a little LED light on the power switch, but it sure helps you know when the power strip is on or off. Our entertainment center was using 68 watts of energy when we thought everything was OFF! Now we have everything plugged into a power strip, and we just turn off that power strip when we go to bed at midnight. We don't need the entertainment center until around 6 p.m. the next night, so we easily save 18 hours/day of phantom loads. Be sure to buy a power strip with a long enough cord so that you can access it easily. Nobody wants to have to climb behind the entertainment center in order to turn off the power strip. We did the same thing with each of our work spaces, connecting similarly-used items to one power strip to make turning them off easy.
• Older appliances, especially refrigerators and freezers, use a lot more electricity than newer Energy Star appliances. We learned that our 5-year old refrigerator that seemed to be working fine was using 5 kWh/day of electricity. We replaced it with a newer Energy Star refrigerator that is using 1.4 kWh/day of electricity. That one appliance purchase saves us 3.6 kWh/day or 108 kWh/month, which was a significant portion (25%) of our bill. We saved needing nearly an extra 1 KW photovoltaic system just by replacing an appliance.

Reduce:

It takes energy to make all kinds of stuff, so it is logical to try not to amass stuff that we don't need. One easy place to start is with the daily mail. First, try to eliminate any catalogues and advertisements you don't need. Second, remember that out of sight does not mean that something is gone. Landfills are real, and a growing problem. Check out the Trash Mountain exhibit when you visit the Eco Experience exhibit in the Progress Center at this year's Minnesota State Fair. This little video is also very informative - http://www.storyofstuff.com/ 

Re-Use:

'One man's trash is another man's treasure' -- right? Before you throw something away, think about whether you can re-use the components, or give the item to someone else to re-use. Before you buy something new, think about whether you really need it, and whether you are purchasing a quality item that will last. The book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart is worth reading. We've found that it's amazing what we don't need if we don't go shopping. When we do go to a store it is with a list in hand of things we've thought about in advance (like food items). We have a rule that if it's not on the list, we don't buy it. Yes, we can go home, contemplate the purchase, and put it on the list for next time, but thinking about purchases in advance goes a long way to avoiding impulse buying.

Recycle:

We started to pay attenion to reducing our consumption in general, and we did a few things to make recycling even easier at our home-office, so it is the first thought, not an after-thought. We have a recycling bag or box located in places where office paper or mail is read, so as we go through the mail it is easy to put the envelope, etc, into the recycling bag. When we put recyling out on trash day, we just go around and collect all of these smaller recycling amounts into one container to put at curbside. We've done the same with newspaper, cardboard, bottles, and cans -- made it automatic and easy to recycle everything that is allowed in our bin, and only resort to 'trash' when we must.

Our recycling collection efforts have paid off - in cash! The minimal left over scrap of aluminum, copper and steel from solar projects we recycle at the end of the year, netted enough cash to pay for six months of garbage collection. That makes sustainability smart for the homeowner and also a smart business decision.

Fact: A banana peel will break down into organic components and return to the earth.

Fact: If you throw a banana peel into the trash, which goes to the landfill, it will never return to the earth.

How could these both be true? It was news to me a few years ago, but comes down to basic chemistry. In order for the organic components in a banana peel to break down and return to the dirt, they need oxygen, and when the banana peel is heaped into a landfill and compressed, it is deprived of oxygen. By throwing the banana peel into the regular trash, we help fill up the landfill. By throwing the banana peel into a compost pile, we get free fertilizer!

There are only a few cities that offer curbside collection of organics, and that's because it's really quite easy to compost your own. Not only do you reduce the amount of stuff you send to the landfill, you create nutrient-rich dirt to add to your garden. We now have a very nice, very easy to maintain stainless steel kitchen composter bin which allows us to collect vegetable and fruit peelings/ends that we can't use, and then empty the kitchen composter into the large compost bin in the yard at our convenience. Rinse the kitchen composter out after you've emptied it, and return it to the countertop. Once the snow has melted we will turn the compost pile and bring the dirt into the garden for a new season. Since we are on a small suburban lot we don't have room in our yard composter for leaves and brush, so when we have to rake or trim shrubs we pile that onto an old sheet or tarp and bring that (in a vehicle) to the city compost site.

Growing Food:

The farmer's market and community supported agriculture (CSA) are both great ways to enjoy locally-grown fruits and vegetables, but there is nothing like a fresh sun-warmed tomato from your own garden! The first year we decided to have a home garden we built a 2' high container garden with scrap lumber, and located it right off of the patio where it is very accessible. The next year we added another 4' x 8' container for growing our own food. Now we have space for several varieities of tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, and an assortment of things we start from seeds. Last year we had summer squash, basil, arugula, and leaf lettuce. We really put a lot in those containers, so adding nutrient-rich compost has been helpful as our only source of fertilizer. Yes, those tomato plants in the photo below are really taller than Dan!

Water Conservation:

Human beings need water to live. It makes sense that we would work to protect this vital natural resource. While we might think we have lots of water in Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes, fresh drinking water needs to be preserved if we are going to live sustainably on the planet. People around the globe are struggling to find enough clean water to drink. When we saw what T. Boone Pickens was doing to try to buy up water rights in the United States, we started to realize that yes, even here, water is the new gold as far as being precious. Why not do some simple things now, in order to preserve water for future generations?

• Stop polluting the water.
• Conserve water when we can. For us this means not trying to maintain grass and a golfcourse type lawn, but moving toward a more sustainable ground cover that grows naturally here. We have also installed a dual-flush toilet in our home-office, to reduce the amount of fresh water that is needed to simply flush waste into the sewer. Why use 8 gallons/flush, or 6 gallons/flush, when we can use 1.6 gallons/flush? When local ordinances allow us to use grey water for this purpose, we'll do what we can to move in that direction. Even so, reducing our water consumption also reduces our water bill - again, sustainability means another smart business decision.
• Rain barrels are an easy way to capture naturally occuring rainfall and direct it to areas of our yard where we need more water, such as our container gardens. In 2010 we installed two old wine-barrel casks to capture the water falling from our gutters, and we used it to water our garden all year. This year we're going to put a gutter on our new Silicon-Energy double-glass solar array (see photos on our portfolio page) so that the water we caputure is even cleaner.

Renewable Energy:

Our first solar energy project was a photovoltaic array mounted on the south-facing roof of our home-office. We have very limited south-facing roof space, and we had reduced our electricity consumption before doing this installation, so we put in a small 1.26 kW solar array which consists of (7) 180 watt Evergreen modules and a Sunny Boy 1100 U string inverter. This original system made about 60% of our electricity.

As our business grew, so did the intensity of our work from home, and this included more computer time and more printing, which increased our electricity use. At the same time, we wanted to test out some new solar products, so we could give first-hand information to our customers. We added a 2.16 KW photovoltaic system as a pergola over our patio, which consists of (12) 180 watt Silicon Energy modules and an Aurora Power One 3.0 transformerless inverter. We also put 1.82 KW of photovoltaic modules with Enphase micro-inverters on the back of the house. This roof faces west, so we used stand-offs to mount them. The Enphase micro-inverters also help mitigate some shading from the neighbor's trees. The POWERFULLY GREEN home-office now has a total of 5.24 KW of photovoltaics.

Clearly, we don't have any more south-facing roof, and it's ideal for solar systems to face south in order to perform their best. However, we really wanted to live with a solar domestic hot water system too, and we'd already purchased two 4' x 8' collectors for last year's Eco Experience exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair. We decided to use the abundant east-facing roof which is the front of the house for our solar hot water system. Instead of tilting the collectors up to face south at a 45 degree angle, we opted to mount them flush to the east-facing roof. First off, we know we will get most of our hot water in the morning when the sun is in the east, and less hot water than we would if they were facing south, which is ideal. However, we will get some hot water, even in wintertime, and that is more solar hot water than we were getting before we put the system in! So far we have noted that starting in March we get some solar hot water, and we expect that from May - October we will get nearly all of our domestic hot water from the solar sytem. Secondly, our neighbors don't even know we've added all of this new solar, because it blends into the roof-line and doesn't draw attention to itself; we think being good neighbors is also important. Our solar hot water system includes (2) 4' x 8' Solar Skies flat plate thermal collectors, a 75-gallon Bradford White storage tank with integrated heat-exchanger and back-up electric heating element, and a Caleffi solar pumping station. We are considering a tankless water heater to replace the back-up electric element in the future.

One additional solar attribute we've added is a solar-tube skylight in the small, dark upstairs bathroom. It was an easy thing to install, and we couldn't be happier with it! Our only problem is that it's so bright in there that we keep trying to turn off the light, and the light isn't on, it's sunlight. The skylight is often bright enough (from the moon) for nighttime trips to the bathroom, which is a little surprising, but very nice.

Our website is 130% powered by certified Renewable Energy Credits.

Kicking Gas:

We're hearing a lot about new electric vehicles! At POWERFULLY GREEN we have to have one vehicle that is capable of pulling an enclosed trailer full of solar modules and equipment, but our first-choice vehicle is currently our hybrid Toyota Prius. It's in very good shape, and we typically get about 52 mpg, though it falls to 42 mpg in the depths of winter. I'm not sure that getting rid of a perfectly good vehicle that already gets good gas mileage is the most sustainable move we could make, so we were thrilled to meet Shayna Berkowitz at ReGo Electric, another local small business. We added a battery pack where the spare tire used to be, which gives us up to 20 additional miles in electric only mode (I didn't even know my Prius could be put into electric only mode!) and will increase our gas mileage to 75 mpg or even more! We'll keep you updated as the warmer weather arrives and we are able to maximize this effort to kick gas.

Health:

If sustainability means the capacity to endure, we surely need to consider our own personal health. We've made a consious effort to reduce our exposure to chemicals -- in fragrances, cosmetics, cleaning products, and by choosing organic sustainably raised foods when we can. We've also decided that no matter how busy we feel like things have gotten, we owe it to ourselves to make time to exercise. Not only do we feel better-stronger-faster, but we have the opportunity to enjoy the earth that we live on, which makes our effort to tread gently on the planet have an intensely personal impact.

Multi-Use Spaces:

We went to see the 2009 Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Not only did we see some awesome student projects and innovative solar energy system design, but we were inspired at what can be done with a small living space. Planning for a daytime use of bedroom space, and building a spare bedroom as a multi-purpose space for regular use, means we can design smaller homes, which will in turn have a smaller footprint on the planet, use less resources to build, and result in smaller home energy bills for heating and cooling space. One of the reasons POWERFULLY GREEN has a home-office is because it feels more sustainable. Why would we close up our home and leave it empty all day so that we can go to an office which also needs to be heated and cooled? We've designed our home space so that we have five useful office spaces if we need them, so we even have room for expansion to accomodate employees. We are able to compost and recycle, cook healthful food for breakfast and lunch, and as it turns out we have quite a variety of solar systems to show visitors when we have a meeting here! We strongly encourage you to look at re-designing your current and future living spaces to include innovative ideas that increase sustainability.

Buy Local:

As we started realizing that big business wasn't necessarily looking out for our personal health or our personal food supply, we recognized the value and importance of supporting our local farmers and other local small business owners. Everybody is interested in saving a dollar, but sometimes when you go to a big box store that boasts lowest prices, what you get is cheapest quality product and worst customer service. The opposite can be true of local businesses. Usually these people live in our own community, and we see them at work and at play in our daily lives. Just as we've found that many of our customers have become friends that are dear to us, we've started buildling relationships with other local small business owners who also care about the sustainability of our local community. It's a win-win-win, for us, for the businesses, and for the planet.

Networking:

The more we branch out and include a full spectrum of sustainability efforts to our mission, the more we find other local experts who care about many of the same things as we do. We can serve as expert advisors for one another, and share ideas for increasing our knowledge and understanding. In addition, since we have so much work to do to turn a whole human species around, there seems to be a lot of room for other people with a similar mission. Why not view these people as colleagues, even friends, instead of competitors? Think about it; we are all in this together. As astronomer Carl Sagan so eloquently wrote, "Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something."