The Cansolair Model RA 240 Solar Max.

Slammed with the sudden increase in oil during the winter of 2007, my spouse and I started looking at alternative energy sources for heating our home.

I noticed in a Canadian Tire flyer that they were selling solar panels for residential use. At almost $2000 they were pretty pricey and the wattage they put out might power a 60 watt light bulb and a small radio.

Geothermal sounded great to us as it was a way of “getting off the oil tit” entirely. Unfortunately we live in an eighty-year-old house and the retrofit would have doubled the already hefty price (around $20,000) for the unit. And because it runs on electricity, your light bill goes up drastically.

Then we thought “Hey wind power! Of course!” but with local zoning laws and a low buy-back rate from the regional electric company for surplus electricity, we had to nix that idea too.

Supplementing oil heat with wood heat is very popular in our area and we considered this option as well. But with both of us working full time we couldn’t see us chopping wood and starting fires for hours a day. There’s also the storage and mess when dealing with wood that really killed our interest in pursuing it as an option.

Enter James Meaney of Dildo, Newfoundland and his company Cansolair, that manufactures solar panels for heating your home. Unlike conventional solar panels that convert solar energy into electricity used to heat up water using an electric water heater, the Model RA 240 Solar Max is a forced convection solar heating unit.

Cold air is pumped by a small fan from the bottom of a room through a small duct into the solar panel where it is heated up and then pumped back into the room. According to Mr. Meaney, all you need is fifteen minutes of sun an hour for the unit to start saving you money on your heating bill. The price was a draw as well — only $2500 per unit.

Most forms of alternative energy available to the average homeowner cost a lot of money to set up and don’t “pay for themselves” for around 20 years. It can be a major investment and is usually best done when the house is built. With some testimonials stating a savings of a tank of oil per Cansolair panel, the unit would pay for itself in three to six years.

Cansolair is currently building its distribution but has already been sold in Australia, Europe and North America. They are currently working on adapting their solar panel design for other uses like water heating. Good luck to this Canadian inventor. He’ll be hearing from us soon!

Geothermal power is extracted from the heat stored in the earth from it’s original formation. It can also be seen on the surface in the form of hot springs. This very old technology is now more than ever being looked at as a means to usher in the inevitable end of oil. The number of new geothermal projects in the United States alone has risen 25 percent since last August.

That number sounds very impressive, but geothermal still only counts for a very small percentage of the world’s energy output. 35% of it is from the United States but it only counts for less than 1% of their total energy.

So why the sudden interest? Well as I mentioned the worlds oil supply continues to deplete. We have reached peak oil (according to some) and deposits for this traditional power source will be more and more difficult to find. Another reason is the advancement in the technology. It used to be that in order for geothermal power to be of any major use, you’d have to live near one of Earth’s major fault lines to acquire the heat in a natural convective method. Enhanced Geothermal Systems do this through hydraulic stimulation. When natural cracks and pores will not allow for flow rates, the permeability can be enhanced by pumping high pressure cold water down an injection well into the rock. The injection increases the fluid pressure in the naturally fractured granite which mobilizes shear events, enhancing the permeability of the fracture system. Water travels through fractures in the rock, capturing the heat of the rock until it is forced out of a second borehole as very hot water, which is converted into electricity using either a steam turbine or a binary power plant system. All of the water, now cooled, is injected back into the ground to heat up again in a closed loop. These technologies are impressive enough to garner the attention of internet giant Google. In 2008 they invested 10 million dollars to further research this potential source.

That being said there are still plenty of untapped traditional geothermal sources and may be the safer bet in such a shaky economy. So far, it’s one of the only commercially proven renewable power source that can deliver baseload power ( minimum demands based on customer requirements )

To give you one example of how geothermal power can help. A company called Ormat, located in Reno, Nevada produces enough geothermal power to run that city. When you think of the electricity used to charge the entertainment landscape of Reno, it makes you wonder why we aren’t investing more heavily into this natural and renewable power source.