Premier green prefab firm closing its doors.

Yikes - Michelle Kaufmann has long been a leader in the green prefab industry and has fallen victim to current circumstances.  As newcomers to the green prefab world, we've been watching her closely - this news just underscores the challenges (and opportunities) ahead for us as we delve into this world.

Modern Prefab On The Ropes: Michelle Kaufmann Packs It In

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/michelle-kaufmann-packs-it-in.php

"A year ago I wrote that modern prefab had lived fast, died young and left a good looking corpse. But I thought if anyone would survive it would be Michelle Kaufmann, the queen of prefab design and marketing, who when I wrote her best of green award, said "an entire industry rides on her coat-tails."

When times were good, Michelle could not find factories to build her stuff; they were making too much money building crap. When the crap market dried up, so did they. Then the banking crisis delivered the final cut, and it is over."

BrightBuilt Barn at AIGA CompostModern Maine

Our presentation to CompostModern Maine was a success.  We learned a lot in organizing our thoughts for the talk and had a captive audience throughout, including a lively discussion after the presentation.  We've uploaded a copy of the presentation to Slide Share (without the charming words) in case anyone wants to see what BrightBuilt did to us as a studio.

BrightBuilt Barn at AIGA CompostModern Maine

View more presentations from kaplanthompson.

Measuring Performance

Updated energy figures as of 5:00 PM today, May 18:

Total electricity produced from go-live in October 2008:   3135 kwh

Total electricity consumed by the Barn in the same period: 1001 kwh

Total surplus to date: 2134 kwh

My electric bill at the main house for April: $7.95

Soon we will have the new and improved website implemented, which will have all performance numbers continuously updated. Stay tuned.

This Saturday, Jesse Thompson and Robin Tannenbaum from Kaplan Thompson will be presenting the BrightBuilt Barn at Compostmodern ME. This is a one day conference geared towards designers and followers of the sustainability movement that explores how incorporating sustainability practices in the design process can help create a socially, ecologically and economically responsible society. Check out http://maine.aiga.org for more information or just come on down.

PowerDash

Real time energy monitoring of the BrightBuilt Barn is almost here. As Keith discussed in the last post, the barn is performing beautifully and is producing so much energy that it is even offsetting most of the energy use of the main house on his property. Our newest partner in the BBB endeavor is PowerDash, a Massachusetts based energy monitoring company that is setting up a network to translate information about energy production and consumption from the barn into an easy to read easy to understand format that for our website. Stephen Lapointe, one of PowerDash partners joined us on site in late April to work on nuts and bolts of this process.

More Numbers

It's been a sunny week here in Maine, and so the Barn has been creating lots of electricity. I decided to check all the numbers again, and compare them to those at the last post, on April 20.

Today at noon the Barn's total production since go-live was 2745 kilowatt-hours. That means that in the past 9 days the PV panels have pumped out 224 kwh, or an average of almost 25 kwh each day. Usage has been modest, now that the cold weather is gone, with air handling, lights, and computers accounting for most of the load - and with the longer days, light usage is going down noticeably. Total usage to date has been 970 kwh, compared with 953 kwh ten days ago, or only 1.9 kwh of electricity used per day.

This means that the current difference between electricity generated and electricity used in the Barn stands at 1775 kwh surplus, meaning that we have put a net of 1775 kwh out on the grid over the past 6 months. The past 9 days alone have accounted for 207 kwh surplus, or about 23 kwh per day on average.

This contribution to the grid helps pay off our carbon debt incurred in the making of the Barn, at the rate of one to two pounds of carbon per kilowatt-hour, depending on the major source of the electricity on the grid. So we appear to have knocked approximately one metric ton of carbon off our debt, even through the depths a cold Maine winter.

And since our main house is just "upstream" of the Barn, we get the benefit of most of that surplus electricity, which is lowering our electrical bill substantially. Last month, our bill from Central Maine Power was only $11.00.

Here's hoping for a sunny Spring!

Performance So Far

Spring is, well, springing up here in Maine. At 9:00 this morning it's bright and sunny, and the outside temperature is 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Almost all of the snow has melted, except for one  small mound perhaps 6 feet long and 2 feet wide that lies in the perpetual shadow of the north side of the main house. 

In the Barn it is a cozy 68 degrees, with no heating except the sunshine pouring in the south-facing windows.

It is almost 6 months since the Barn systems were turned on last October, and it seems time to assess performance so far.

Most important to me, the Barn has been a pleasure to live and work in. It has been comfortably warm all winter, even during record-setting cold spells. The systems have worked flawlessly, with no breakdowns or failures. The structure has held up to extreme weather, including impressive snowfalls of up to 2 feet per storm, and several feet cumulatively.

As of this morning at 9:00 AM, the solar electric panels have produced 2521 kilowatt-hours of electricity since being "switched on" last October. The barn itself has consumed 953 kwh during that time, for a net surplus of 1568 kilowatt-hours. I find this remarkable, given how cold this winter was.

Those surplus 1568 kwh translate into nearly 3000 pounds (more than a metric ton) of carbon that will not be needed from a coal-fired electric generating plant.

More directly, the Barn's energy surplus is reducing our use of grid power at the main house -my electric bill this past month was $11.00, compared to nearly $130 this same time last year.

Soon we plan to have the Barn's energy performance tracked continuously on our website, so anyone can monitor our results.

So stay tuned - there's much more to come.