BMS reConnect #7: Electrification and The Beast
The Beast in my basement, that is.
ELECTRIFICATION/DECARBONIZATION
Lots of talk these days about the “electrification” of our built environment…residential, commercial, industrial…it is everywhere. I want to give you a glimpse into the journey I am undertaking at my home, which is a case study in unintended benefits.
My house was built in 1927. It is a 2500 sq ft, 3 bedroom center hall colonial heated with one-pipe steam heat, and when we bought it 4.5 years ago it had no AC. For the first two winters, I heated the house with this bad boy: an oil fired, two-pass Weil-McLain that is about the same age as my kid’s grandparents. (Shout out to Grandma/Grandpa/Grammy/&Pops!)
The boiler is caked in asbestos, we have an oil tank in the basement, and there is a low water return ringing the perimeter of the basement that needs to be replaced. After much consideration, I decided the cost of a boiler upgrade and gas conversion—I’m thinking it would have been $25k+ with piping/oil tank removal/new gas lines/abestos abatement/etc—was going to be prohibitive.
Figuring I could kill two birds with one stone, I decided to install a mini-split heat pump system about 3 years ago. Total of 4 heads, one in each of the bedrooms and one downstairs. The boiler now lays dormant, we are warm enough in the winter, and now we have AC, which is great.
Then one day about two years ago, as I was blinded by the morning sun in my back porch, I realized the home was perfectly oriented for solar. After a mind-numbing amount of over-analysis, we pulled the trigger last year on a 12.6 kW photovoltaic solar array. I did a cash-out re-fi of my mortgage to pay for it (locked in a nice low rate), and figured it would have about a 7 year payback through energy savings and incentives. Well within my tolerance considering I am never moving again.
So…now we have heat pumps AND I am making my own electricity with a plant on my roof. Without ever really intending on it, I have found myself on the path toward full-on electrification.
It is also worth noting that I am a soccer mom. Been rocking a minivan for about 8 years now, and there’s no turning back. Our van has had a bunch of issues over the past few months, and it was time for an upgrade. I recently wound up finding a plugin hybrid van and pulled the trigger. The new van will go about 30 miles in electric mode on a charge (my wife takes it back/forth to work ~6 miles per day), gets 82MPGe, and I have calculated that the cost of charging the vehicle (given the solar) is equivalent to filling up at around $1.90/gallon of gasoline. That is way better than the $4.00+/gallon we are seeing at the pump right now.
My next steps—timeframe undetermined—are to upgrade to an electric heat pump water heater, get a whole-home battery, and then eventually get a second EV (w/bidirectional charging capability…looking at you, F150 Lightning) and maybe some more solar.
As this has all come into focus, so has my End Game: an energy efficient, off-grid capable homestead with EV’s that can dock at the house for additional backup capacity, all powered by the sun. I’m more than half way there. I’ve made the case for electrification (at my house) without ever setting out to do so. Who knew?
WAR & ENERGY
I’m sorry to go into geopolitics here, but I am finding this whole situation in eastern Europe right now really hard to watch. It is heartbreaking to see the scenes. And, perhaps more than ever, this situation is bringing to light how fragile and backwards our global energy situation is. Sourcing fossil fuels from tyrannical regimes that perpetuate war and human rights violations seems like an objectively bad answer. Intermittent renewable technologies that require conflict minerals in manufacturing and can’t handle the grid’s full-load requirements won’t get the whole job done anytime soon. Drilling and fracking are nasty business, and nuclear comes with its own set of problems. How is this going to play out over the next 200 or so years? I wish I had a crystal ball.
I’ve been waiting years for somebody to propose a Moon Mission approach that heavily invests in nuclear and renewables for a long term sustainable future while simultaneously driving near-term investment dollars into fossil fuel exploration and extraction. It seems clear to me that the choice—at least for a resource rich country like the US—shouldn’t be either fossil fuels or renewables or nuclear, but all of the above, at scale and immediately. Anybody else with me here?
BUILDING AUTOMATION
Nice article from ACHR News on the topic of building automation in the dramatically underserved SMB space. See how small and medium sized buildings can benefit from smarter controls:
Note: one would think the SMB market is going to have to eventually break toward more energy efficient practices as decarbonization laws kick in over the next decade or so. It will be interesting to see how the early movers capitalize on incentives to get ahead of the curve.
BMS TECH TIP
We have already been on the market for a few years with encrypted BMS communications on our CIPer control platform, but there is a lot of interest right now in BACnet Secure Connect, the encrypted version of the BACnet protocol. Great primer here on this emerging technology, courtesy of a TridiumTalk last year. Note: BACnet SC is available in Niagara 4.11.
ACOUSTIC JAMS
This is old school (for me). Great song.
Brought some customer/friends out to a darts bar in NYC last week. What a fun night…other than getting home at 1:30AM on a weekday. Dive bar w/darts > fancy restaurants…as long as you’re with the right crowd.
Two matches this week. Play well, everyone!
Keep those letters & postcards coming