BTW - for anyone in NEO in a position to take their homes further green, I strongly recommend as a first step talking to Bill MacDermott - straight insight from a very expert source... he works with solar and wind power... here's a bit from my experience with Bill

Disrupt IT

Just an update for anyone that might be interested...  I just got approval from the City of Cleveland Heights building inspector last week for the Uni-Solar solar shingle installation that I installed last month as a the first local demonstration project. 

Here is a description of the installation for anyone who might be interested:

"The 60 Uni-Solar SHR-17 solar shingles that make up
the photovoltaic (PV) array on the south facing back
roof gather the sunlight and change it into electricity.
They currently cost about $125 dollars each, for a
total cost of about $7500. They each generate 17
watts of electricity.  It is generated as direct current
(DC) for a total of 1020 watts (just over a kilowatt). 

Cleveland gets an average of 4 hours of sunlight per
day, so each day this 1 kw system has the potential
to generate 4 kilowatt hours of power. That works out
to almost 1500 kwh per year. If I were to cut down all
of the trees in my back yard, and get my neighbors to
cut down all of their trees too, than I might be able to
generate as much solar electric power as I consume.

The direct current (DC) electricity from the solar
array travels through wires in armored cable from the
back roof to the garage. In the garage the wires
enter the Sunny Boy 1800u inverter ($2000) after
passing through a DC disconnect/fuse box.

The inverter converts the DC power from solar panels
to AC power (alternating current) which is what the
house uses. Any electricity that the house doesn't use
goes back to the elecrtic grid by way of the same
electric power lines that normally deliver electricity
to the house.

The total cost of the parts of the system were about
$11,000. The cost of the installation labor might cost
about $2000, depending on the installer.

With the current local rate for coal generated electricity
being about 13 cents per kwh, the economic payback
for this sized building integrated PV system would be
about 66 years. This would, of course, be for a house
with no trees on the south side."

I also have a nice photo of the completed installation that I can try to post, or e-mail to anyone who wants.

Thanks again Norm.

Bill

billmacd99 [at] yahoo [dot] com

I hope that this is enough said on tree cutting. With the preemptory ash bore cutting we will loose scores of trees in Northeast Ohio as it is. Just keep pushing that air quality metric further out to 2030 or so...

There are some wonderfully sunny spots in Cleveland Heights. The businesses there whose roofs are not harvesting the sunlight should become interested, and if they are laughing at this, they COULD BE laughing all the way to the bank. They are using a lot more electricity than a single homeowner. Some examples that come immediately to mind are the Cedar Lee Theater, Zagaras Marketplace, and the big box stores at Severance such as HOME DEPOT! Oh and then there are the public buildings such as the new rec center, city hall and the new, "we needed a bridge more than we needed energy efficiency" Heights Main Library. Again I say, solar is great, but let's not cut down oxygen generating trees to create sunny spots for it. Oh and let's not also cut off our noses to spite our faces...

By the way, I heard from Jan Kious who is building the region's first straw bale house in Cleveland Heights, that they are using ecopavers for their driveway, so that they can accommodate the tree roots and demo permeable paving in CH. Building begins Wednesday! Walk by as the process unfolds over the next several months on Cedar just east of Norfolk.