Saturday, March 20

• Seminar: 10am to 12:30pm
• Tours: 2pm to 4pm

Seminar: Designing and Owning a NetZero Energy Home

• Grant MacEwan University, CN Theatre Rm. 5-142, 105 St. Building at 105 St. and 105 Ave
• Peter Amerongen (builder), Gordon Howell, P.Eng. (solar engineer), Conrad Nobert (Mill Creek homeowner)
• Seminar and tours: No need to register. Cost: free

Open House Tours - see ideas you can use on your own house

• energy- and water-efficient construction and appliances reduce space heat by 65%, hot water by 75%, and
  electricity use by 50% for upgrade cost of less than $20,000. All electric. No need for natural gas line.
• air and water heat recovery, LED lighting, rainwater harvesting, passive solar, active solar, solar electricity
• sustainable materials, healthy indoor air quality, eco-landscaping, net zero emissions

Mill Creek NetZero Home, December 15, 2009, 14:00.

As we approach the winter solstice and the three-month anniversary of our moving in, we continue to learn about our new house. These observations are mostly qualitative, because we don’t have the rest of our solar modules up, and we haven’t set up monitoring equipment yet. We are tentatively planning to remove the door of our wood stove on July 1st, 2010  and then monitor the house’s energy use for a year.  read more... »

(MCNZH concrete floor being bathed by sun through a 9’x6’ window)

The most important design considerations for cold climate building are insulation, building envelope, and passive solar design. Given our lofty goals for the Mill Creek NetZero Home (MCNZH), we pushed hard to maximize our return on every one of these fronts.

The MCNZH collects 54% of its annual space heat through passive solar design – that’s 8747 kWh or 31.5 Gigajoules. It does so by:

1. having huge south windows that are specially manufactured to maximize solar heat gain
2. containing a large amount of thermal mass to absorb the solar heat when the sun shines
3. having movable solar awnings that allow 100% of the sunlight to hit the windows during the heating season (the awnings are strictly speaking not a passive part of the solution).

I’ll discuss the first two bullets on this list, given that I’ve already described the movable awnings at length.  read more... »

MCZNH Solar Awnings (summer and winter positions)

The Mill Creek NetZero Home (MCNZH) will have a ground-breaking solar awning installed on its south face (introduced in Solar Awning Part 1). Essentially, it's a movable awning made out of photovoltaic (PV) modules. It will serve two functions: to shade the south windows in the summer and fall, and to tilt the modules so that they are always at an optimum angle to the sun. An analysis of the solar awning's net energy benefit follows.  read more... »

Constructing a net zero energy home in Edmonton, Alberta is extremely challenging because this is a cold place. Thankfully, it's also a sunny place. Still, in order to achieve the net zero standard, factors such as energy efficiency, insulating values and solar energy collection need to be maximized.

Peter the builder and I came up with the idea of an adjustable solar awning system that will increase by about 10% the amount of energy that the Mill Creek NetZero Home (MCNZH) produces annually.

I just wrote a proposal to help fund the prototype solar awning that we will put on the MCNZH. Here are some excerpts. Sorry for the formal tone, and warning: the following may be for eco-nerds only.

Passive Solar Energy

The MCNZH is designed to passively collect a large amount of solar heat through its south-facing windows. In fact, the 3642 kWh of solar heat that will be captured through the windows represent 46% of the annual space heating required by the MCNZH. With such a large area of south-facing windows, though, there is considerable risk of the home overheating.

In a home as well-insulated as the MCNZH will be, there are “…severe restrictions in the amount of south windows that can be used without excessive overheating” (CMHC, 2005, p.53). “Increasing the window overhang[, however,] allows for additional south glazing” (CMHC, 2005, p.54). In order to remain comfortable for its occupants, then, the south windows must be shaded by overhangs.

The installation of overhangs presents a compromise between maximum solar energy capture and occupant comfort. HOT2000 simulations show that the MCNZH will capture 314 kWh less annually if equipped with overhangs (HOT2000 is a residential building performance evaluation software distributed by Natural Resources Canada (Natural Resources Canada, n.d.)).  read more... »