The Kentucky Solar Partnership and Appalachia – Science in the Public Interest, with the support of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED), Johnson Controls, Inc., the Franklin County Cooperative Extension Service, and Kentucky State University, present a series of introductory and advanced training classes on solar photovoltaic system design and installation practices.
 
Full workshop descriptions and registration information can be found at www.kysolar.org. Financial support with low-interest loans covering up to 100% of registration fees plus grants for travel expenses is available to residents of eastern Kentucky, thanks to the support from MACED.
 
Introduction to Solar Photovoltaics
May 8-9, 2012           
8:30 am – 5:00 pm            
Fee:   $275
Instructor: Chris LaForge, ISPQ Certified PV Instructor
      NABCEP Certified PV Installer
Location: Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office
101 Lakeview Court, Frankfort, KY 40601
 
Solar Site Assessments and PV System Design       
May 10, 2012
8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Fee:   $140
Instructor: Chris LaForge, ISPQ Certified PV Instructor
      NABCEP Certified PV Installer
Prerequisite: Introduction to Photovoltaics or equivalent prior training or experience
Location: Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office
101 Lakeview Court, Frankfort, KY 40601
 
Solar Photovoltaics & the National Electric Code
May 11, 2012
8:00 am – 4:00 pm            
Fee:   $140
Instructor: Chris LaForge, ISPQ Certified PV Instructor
      NABCEP Certified PV Installer
Prerequisite: Introduction to Solar Photovoltaics or equivalent prior training or experience
(Code officials require no prerequisites)
For Installers, Code Officials, Inspectors, and Building Professionals
Location: Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office
101 Lakeview Court, Frankfort, KY 40601

Introduction to Solar Water Heaing
June 5-6, 2012
8:30 am – 5:00 pm each day      
Fee:   $275
Instructor: Bill Guiney, Director of Solar Heating & Cooling, Johnson Controls, Inc.
Prerequisite: none
Location: Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office
101 Lakeview Court, Frankfort, KY 40601 

Solar Industry Trends & New Technologies
June 7, 2012
8:30 am – 12:00 pm            
Fee:   $100
Instructor: Bill Guiney, Director of Solar Heating & Cooling, Johnson Controls, Inc.
Prerequisite: none
Location: Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office
101 Lakeview Court, Frankfort, KY 40601

Advanced Solar Photovoltaics Hands-On Installation Training
July 10-12, 2012               
8:30am – 5:00 pm each day          
Fee:   $415
Instructor: Chris LaForge, ISPQ Certified PV Instructor
      NABCEP Certified PV Installer
Prerequisites: Introduction to Solar Photovoltaics or equivalent prior training or experience.
Location: Franklin County Cooperative Extension Office
101 Lakeview Court, Frankfort, KY 40601

To learn more, contact the Kentucky Solar Partnership at 502-227-4562 or solar@kysolar.org.

NABCEP Training Hours: Participants will earn training hours to use towards the eligibility requirements for the NABCEP Solar PV Installer certification exam.

CEU’s available for Kentucky licensed Master Electricians and Electrical Electricians for Introduction to Solar PV; Solar Site Assessments and PV System Design; and Solar PV and the National Electric Code.

More than 50,000 commercial and residential electricity users in Cincinnati hired a new electricity company this week - one that aims to power the city on 100% clean energy.

Cincinnati is the first city in Ohio and the first of its size to move to 100% clean energy. The city's manager expects the average eligible household's bill to decrease by $133 as a result.

The customers will leave Duke Energy, which relies heavily on coal-burning power, and go to First Energy Solutions. A portion of the city's power will now come from local renewable sources, such as rooftop solar and solar power from the Cincinnati Zoo Solar Canopy project and the rest will come from renewable energy credits. Ohio has local renewable energy projects to provide electricity in part because of its state Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard - a policy similar to the one Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance (of which KFTC is a founding member) supports passing in Kentucky.

Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) are generated when renewable energy comes online in the grid somewhere else and First Energy Solutions will purchase them in the amount needed to offset the remainder of the city's electricity use. RECs are a market mechanism that supports the growth of renewable energy projects.

When given a choice on the ballot last year, Cincinnati residents overwhelmingly voted to allow the city to bargain for electricity on behalf of its residents. This enabled the city to drop its contract with Duke and to find a new provider. Ohio's utility market, unlike Kentucky's, is largely deregulated, allowing such a ballot effort to go forward.

Read more here.

On Friday, three KFTC members, three KFTC staff, and two staff members from MACED's E3 (Energy Efficient Enterprises) program performed and observed an energy audit of KFTC's office in London.

The office in London is the only building that KFTC owns. The building was completely remodeled in the late 1990s. In recent years, KFTC's member leaders have pointed out how important it is for our own office to be energy efficient, especially as we do work in the community to promote energy efficiency. In 2011, the Renew East Kentucky strategy team of members added an audit and upgrade to KFTC's program of work. The photos below document the assessment process--the first step in making the office more energy efficient and possibly even eventually generating its own electricity.

Laurel County KFTC members Felix Woods, Vicki Lauderdale, and Jennifer Even Melton were on hand to learn about the energy auditing process from Josh Bills and Hope Broecker from MACED. Everyone pitched in when needed and learned a ton.

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MACED staff Hope and Josh begin the audit by examining the lighting and appliances in the office. Then, they take a look at the indoor parts of the heating, air-conditioning & ventilation (HVAC) system.

Oops! It is way past time to change the filter on the air return vent. A new filter will improve air flow and the efficiency of the HVAC system.

The group then moves outside, where Hope and Josh inspect the heating system:

Josh takes photos of every step in the process to help come up with an energy improvement plan later:

Josh crawls under the cob-web strewn crawl space:

 Once under there, he inspects the air-conditioning system:

Next, the group moves back inside to perform the blower door test. This test checks for the amount of air exchange between the outside and the inside of the building, and helps to reveal the sources of drafts and air leaks.

Josh and Hope begin to assemble to the blower door frame:

After assembling the frame and putting up the blower door, Josh runs a hose to the outside of the building that will help test for the difference in air pressure between inside and out:

 KFTC member Felix helps out by shutting and locking all the office windows. This helps ensure a good blower door test:

Back downstairs, Hope installs the fan into the blower door:

 You can see the pressure & flow gauge and the blower door controls in the foreground.

Once the fan is installed, Hope removes rings from the fan before switching it on:

KFTC members and staff watch as MACED performs the blower door test:

Once the fan is switched on, the blower door begins depressurizing the indoor office space.

In order to get a good blower door test reading, Josh tapes over some gaps in an attic hatch that was letting in too much air:

Now that the test is fully working, you can feel air flow coming from all kinds of unexpected places...like electrical outlets, and interior door jambs.

Jennifer is surprised at the amount of air flowing out of the door jamb:

And Felix rigs up a trash bag to show how much air is flowing from the door jamb upstairs:

And Vicki shows her surprise at the amount of hot air that's flowing out of a small hole in the upstairs attic closet:

 After the audit is complete, the group is happy to pose with their new friends: the blower door and Hope and Josh of MACED.

The group moves outside for one more photo before saying goodbye:

Soon, MACED will create a report on the audit and a possible plan for upgrading the office. We'll then begin exploring creative ways to finance the project, and will keep everyone posted on the project's progress here on the KFTC blog.

"This has been a great meeting and an opportunity for me to learn some things I didn't know," said KFTC member John Harrod to the group gathered in Morehead on the evening of April 9 for the Rural Electric Cooperative Public Forum. "I am encouraged and optimistic about our prospects for moving forward with energy saving ideas and more use of renewable energy sources."

The Public Forum was held as part of the Clean Energy Collaborative, in which KFTC participates along with other public interest groups, the local rural electric co-ops, and the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC). The mission of the Collaborative is to review and recommend energy efficiency and renewable energy actions to EKPC, and to promote collaboration among all the parties in implementation of these ideas.

The Public Forum focused on energy efficiency and was definitely a collaborative effort. It began with presentations from key EKPC and co-op staff along with KFTC members and others. Rowan County KFTC member Sue Tallichet presented on the important reason for increasing energy-savings programs: they reduce the need for building costly new power plants and, thus, help to stabilize electric rates. The Forum was emceed by KFTC member Tona Barkley and David Crews of EKPC.

Attendees also learned about three energy efficiency programs--Button-Up, How$martKY, and $impleSaver--before breaking into small focus group to give the co-ops feedback on how they might better implement existing and new energy-savings programs. The conversations were hearty and eye-opening, and both co-op members and co-op staff learned much.

"I found out that our home qualifies for three programs that I didn't know about before, all things I had been trying to figure out how to do anyway," said Harrod. "The co-ops are living up to their name as cooperative enterprises between the managers and the members."

The results from the focus groups were presented at the most recent Collaborative meeting, and a great discussion ensued about how to use the feedback and findings from the members to improve the co-ops' energy saving programs.

John Harrod has good reason to be optimistic. "I think these ideas are going to take hold and spread as more people see their friends and neighbors saving energy, using renewables, and saving money in the long term."

The article, "Why baseload power is doomed" by Chris Nelder gives an excellent rebuttal to a myth we hear commonly in Kentucky - that renewable energy cannot replace "baseload" electric power.

The author opens, "A persistent myth about the challenges of integrating renewable power into the grid is that because solar and wind are intermittent, grid operators need to maintain full generation capacity from “baseload” plants powered by coal and nuclear."

But, "The notion that renewables cannot provide baseload power is really an artifact of the way the grid and its regulators have evolved," he says.

(Baseload power generators are large units that provide most of the electricity to the grid. They rarely shut down, providing most of the "base load" of power, hence the name. In Kentucky, these are mostly coal-burning plants. When consumers draw more electricity from the grid than those plants can provide, utilities fire up additional units, usually fueled by natural gas, to provide the extra electricity needed to meet demand.)

In the article, the author describes why much of today's existing grid is not "smart." It grew up around demand, rather than in a planned, logical fashion. Lines went up haphazardly, starting in populations centers and then reaching out to rural areas as demand grew. As the grid grew, so did a very complex system of connecting and regulating it - one which includes several different agencies in each of several overlapping U.S. "grid territories."

This haphazard design makes grid technicians' jobs very tricky and makes them therefore resistant to the type of innovation that is required to bring large-scale renewable energy online.

"Grid operators have one overriding, fearsome task: They must maintain enough supply from this very complex system, within a narrow range of frequencies and voltages, to meet constantly fluctuating demand at all times. Therefore they tend to be risk-averse, preferring to stick with what they know to be reliable, and avoiding innovation.

Before the advent of renewables, generating power was a pretty straightforward task: When demand increased, you just added more fuel to an engine. With renewables, the task is reversed: The engines (wind turbines and solar collectors) ramp up and down of their own accord, and grid operators must adjust to accommodate their output."

So we need to get a smarter grid across the U.S. - one that provides real time information - and use the good models already out there to better predict how and when renewables will output power. It's a dance that we can master if we're willing to try.

"If all generators were able to ramp up and down on demand, and if grid operators were able to predict reliably when and where the sun would be shining and the wind would be blowing, accommodating any amount of power from renewables would be no problem."

Many states and countries successfully integrated large portions of renewable energy into the grid successfully. The author discusses several such examples including Germany and Texas. These places are proving and will continue to prove what is possible while places that hesitate to act are left behind.

We cannot ignore that some sectors of our economy stand to gain if we remain locked into the old system of electric power, but, Nelder says, the facts about what is technically possible remain firmly on the side of renewable energy supporters.

"The attachment to our antiquated architecture of power generation and grid management is simply a failure of imagination and innovation," Nelder concludes.

KFTC Members and Allies Are Moving the Clean Energy Conversation Forward!

• Number of Kentuckians participating in lobby trainings on the Clean Energy Opportunity Act: 200+
• Number of attendees at the February 13th clean energy reception: 75
• Number of legislators in attendance: 16
• Number of legislators who attended last year’s clean energy event: 2
• Number of Kentuckians who lobbied during the 2012 clean energy lobby day: 60
• Number of Kentuckians who lobbied during the 2011 clean energy lobby day: 40
• Number of meetings with legislators about the Clean Energy Opportunity Act during the 2012 lobby day: 50
• Number of meetings with legislators about the Clean Energy Opportunity Act during the 2011 lobby day: 20
• Number of clean energy bills supported by KFTC that were heard during the 2012 session: 3
• Number of clean energy bills that were heard during the 2011 session: 1
• Number of clean energy bills that passed this year: 0

To change that last number, there's much to do. We're building New Power at KFTC.  Want to get involved? Contact nancy@kftc.org.

More than 60 citizen lobbyists came to Frankfort on Tuesday to talk to legislators about the promise of clean energy.

The Clean Energy Lobby Day was hosted by the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance (KySEA), a coalition of 52 organizations working to pass clean energy policy that would stem rising energy rates and create thousands of new jobs. In addition to grassroots organizations like KFTC, a founding member, KySEA includes small businesses, faith communities, housing groups, and even individuals.

Meeting with more than 50 different legislators, participants discussed House Bill 167, the Clean Energy Opportunity Act. Sponsored by Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, the bill would establish benchmarks for increasing the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency in Kentucky over the next ten years. It would also establish payment rates for renewable energy to encourage renewable energy industries to locate in Kentucky and create new jobs.

Many surrounding states have already passed such measures, and new jobs in clean energy are going to Ohio and North Carolina instead of Kentucky.

EKU students John Bowers and Emily Justus lobbied for the first time. Justus, a native of Pike County, said she came to Frankfort to “show our support and learn about the whole process.”

Bowers of Berea said, “I’m very much for clean energy. I think that’s the wave of the future and the direction we need to go.”

The Clean Energy Opportunity Act is assigned to the House Tourism, Development and Energy Committee. One strategy of the lobby day was to press for the bill to get a hearing, and we learned today that our efforts were successful. The bill will get a hearing in committee in the next few weeks!

As part of our work around clean energy and transition, KFTC participates in a Clean Energy Collaborative that held its first meeting of the new year on January 31 in Richmond.

The collaborative was formed in 2010 when KFTC and allies succeeded in convincing East Kentucky Power Cooperative to abandon plans for a new coal-burning power plant in Central Kentucky. In addition to KFTC and EKPC, the collaborative includes other public interest groups, the Attorney General’s office, and all 16 of EKPC’s distribution co-ops. The group has a two-year charge to study renewable energy and energy efficiency options and present proposals to EKPC.

In addition to being an important piece of the work to move Kentucky beyond coal and toward cleaner energy and new jobs, the collaborative plays a role in creating greater transparency and member involvement in the rural electric co-ops.

KFTC member Tona Barkley helped preside over the meeting as Vice Chair of the Collaborative, along with David Crews of EKPC (pictured left), the Collaborative's new Chair, who introduced himself to the group at the meeting. KFTC member Steve Wilkins participated as a co-chair of the Demand-Side Management Working Group. During the public comment period, EKPC Board Chair Paul Hawkins invited Barkley to present the collaborative’s annual report at the next EKPC board meeting.

Much of the discussion at the January 31 meeting focused on recommendations from the Demand-Side Management Working Group. Six of seven recommendations, which focus on increasing DSM programs in the co-ops, passed with consensus. The seventh recommendation will be brought back to the full collaborative for further discussion in April.

Mark your calendars: The next meeting of the Collaborative will be Tuesday, April 17 in the afternoon at the Perkins Building on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University. Stay tuned to this blog for more info as the date approaches. KFTC members are encouraged to attend and speak up during the public comment period.

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Here are the six recommendations that will be presented to EKPC for consideration by its management, board and member co-ops:

Measurement and Verification Recommendations

• Partner with distribution member cooperatives and allocate resources for measurement and verification (M&V) of the cooperatives' existing and future DSM efforts. This includes developing a standardized, on-going process to collect data, investigate, and report on dynamic energy and demand impacts.
• Offer generally accepted DSM quantitative and qualitative analytic services to member systems on an individual, group, and/or system average basis using each member cooperative’s unique market and cost structures.
  

Marketing and Implementation Recommendations

• Aggressively help member systems market those DSM programs with the optimal benefit-cost profiles.
• Develop strong educational, marketing and training programs for member systems to promote DSM efforts considering all potential markets and channels for messaging.
• Allocate resources toward becoming and serving as a consultant and expert for member systems in their DSM efforts. Identify best practices, provide research support, and explore partnerships to this end.

Overcoming Barriers/Challenges Recommendations

• Continually evaluate new and on-going DSM programs, refining efforts to ensure optimal penetration of target markets.

This year at I Love Mountains day we are using homemade pinwheels to share our message of calling for an end to mountaintop removal and transitioning to a clean energy economy.  We are asking everyone coming to I Love Mountains day to bring one pinwheel. 

Then we will deliver each of our pinwheels to Governor Beshear at I Love Mountains.  With 1,2000 of us estimated to attend, each pinwheel will represent 50 people living with cancer that has been linked to the pollution from mountaintop removal mining.   Click here to learn about the study that came out in July that found that 60,000 people living in Central Appalachia have cancer because of mountaintop removal.  So, 1,200 pinwheels x 50 = 60,000. 

But the pinwheels are also a beautiful way to visually demonstrate the hope that we all have for transitioning to a new, clean energy economy that can bring good jobs and cleaner air and water to our state!  What better way to share our message and help the Governor understand what is at stake! 

Will you join us by making and bringing a homemade pinwheel with you at I Love Mountains day?  We hope you will!  Here is a link to some super simple instructions!  And if you do, leave us a comment here to let us know how it goes!  But also don't worry if you can't make a pinwheel, we will have a few extras to share that day!

Here is a great example of what New Power looks like in Kentucky!

that makes energy efficiency upgrades affordable and doable for customers of rural electric co-ops in eastern Kentucky. The video describes how the Big Sandy Rural Electric Cooperative is helping its customers in Floyd and Johnson counties save money by saving energy.

How$martKY - Energy Efficiency for Everyone from Appalshop CMI on Vimeo.

How$mart is an innovative way to finance energy efficiency upgrades. Designed by the good folks at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED), it is a currently in a two-year pilot phase. Participating rural electric cooperatives include Grayson Rural Electric, Big Sandy Rural Electric, Fleming-Mason Electric, and Jackson Energy. 

If you live in a county served by one of these co-ops, give them a call today to ask for your home to be evaluated for energy savings through How$mart!

KFTC members have long urged utilities in Kentucky, especially our rural electric co-ops, to invest more in energy efficiency programs. Our members are helping to spread the word about this promising approach, and continue to nudge and encourage the co-ops to do everything they can to make this program successful in the pilot stage so it can expand in the future.

If you like this video, be sure to check out other similar stories produced by Appalshop and shared on a new website called Making Connections News. There you will find a growing collection of videos and radio stories about efforts to "build a healthy future for Appalachia's land and people."