Levine said he used radiant floor heating to keep his home warm. Propane-heated water is pumped through tubes under the floor, warming the house...
Energy, and how to both conserve it and create it, was the subject of the day at the Stamford Elementary School on Saturday.
The Stamford Energy Focus Group held a Stamford Energy Fair in the school's gymnasium, with booths set up by businesses, question and answer sessions with politicians, and a panel of local residents who are using alternative energy sources to heat their homes.
Sen. Dick Sears. D-Bennington, spoke briefly about Vermont's energy needs. He said the state faces a daunting energy supply challenge with the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant due to close in 2012 and electricity contracts with Hydro-Quebec to run out in 2015. Sears said that together, those two sources supply two-thirds of Vermont's electricity.
He said it was likely the contract with Hydro-Quebec would be renegotiated, but that it would also likely be different from the agreement signed in the early 1990s.
Sen. Robert Hartwell, D-Dorset, attended as well. "I think it's absolutely unacceptable that a person should have to choose between food and fuel, or fuel and prescription medicine," he said.
Hartwell said that government assistance and incentive programs were flawed in that many cut benefits completely once a person or a business reaches certain levels of income. He said the economic cutoffs punish, rather than reward, people for doing well.
He said that alternative energy sources, notably solar power, was the solution to the state's energy problems. He said he supported tax incentives for those using solar power. Hartwell also pushed conservation, saying that he would like to see the state cut down on travel by state employees.
Rep. John Moran, D-Wardsboro, also said the state had to pursue renewable energy sources in the long-term and brace for heating difficulties in the short-term. Moran said he was working to get information out to the public on how to stay warm safely. Moran said that groups like the Stamford Energy Group were the place to look for change in the state. He said that waiting for solutions to come from the state level was not going to work and that things will have be done from the bottom up.
Philip Bartlett, the Republican challenger to Moran said that timber production from state forests was not at a tenth of what it could be, and that if the forests were logged more, then some of the wood and money could go to fuel assistance programs.
Bartlett brought up burning trash in incinerators as a source of energy. He said new filtering technology was available so that air pollution could be kept to a minimum. Bartlett said the current practice of burying trash in landfills would do more to pollute ground water than burning it would pollute the air.
Aside from politicians, people such as Chris Derby-Kilfoyle, owner of Berkshire Photovoltaic Services, talked about the nature of their businesses. Derby-Kilfoyle's company installs solar electric systems. He said he would like to see Stamford develop the ability to be "off-grid," supplying its own electricity through solar power and other renewable energy sources.
Conserving heat in the wintertime was a specialty of some of the speakers and those at the booths. Ted Taylor of Energy Wise Homes, a company based in East Dorset, spoke about properly insulating a home for the winter. He said a common source of heat loss was in basements and attics, near the edge of the foundation and around chimneys.
Taylor said he didn't like to use fiberglass insulation and preferred a combination of close cell foam and cellulose. He said fiber glass loses 50 percent of its insulation value at 18 degrees below zero, and mice and other rodents liked to live in it. He said cellulose was more resistant to fire and allowed for less air flow.
Manning a booth was Mark Beck, of Advanced Energy Panels, a company based in Hoosick Falls, N.Y. Beck was showing off panels that could be custom fitted to go on the inside of a window.
Beck said the frames to the panels were made from 60 percent recycled aluminum and the panels themselves were made from two layers of polyolephine plastic. He said they could withstand a baseball being thrown at them at 60 miles per hour, as he struck one panel repeatedly with his fist.
Beck said the Holden Mill Building in Bennington had fitted one third of its windows with the panels and saved $18,200 in liquid propane the first year they were installed. Beck said that the owners reported saving $100,000 over a four-year span and were projecting to save $50,000 this year on fuel.
Christina Butcher, 11, set up a display showing the energy audit she did for her family's home as part of her home school project. The information she gathered was hung on a drying rack her family uses to dry their clothes instead of a mechanical dryer.
With the help of the Big Y supermarket chain, Butcher was also giving out free re-usable shopping bags to the first 50 people through the door.
Closing out the fair was a panel session with Bill Levine, Lloyd Vosburgh and Denise Rondeau. The three of them had implemented alternative energy sources in some aspect of their homes and answered questions about how they worked.
Levine said he used radiant floor heating to keep his home warm. Propane-heated water is pumped through tubes under the floor, warming the house. Levine said the rest of the house had been designed with natural heating in mind. The windows are set low so that in the summer the sun doesn't come in as much, keeping the place cool, while in the winter, when the sun is low, it comes in and warms it up.
Vosburgh said that he used solar heated water tanks to heat his house. "I'm very happy because any day the sun shines, I get a gain," he said.
Continue this article at Bennington Banner