Renewable Energy in Burlington, Vermont
A Project for CDAE 85 at University of Vermont by Daniel Goodyear
If you are interested designing an renewable energy
power system for your home in Burlington, Vermont, here is some of the
information I have found and compiled:
At this
website, http://www.homepower.com I
found
valuable information about designing a power system to suit the needs of
an
energy conscious home.
For an over all
comparison of solar radiation in different parts of the United States,
this map from Home Power.com is very
informative:
Courtesy Homepower.com
Clearly, the sun does not spend as much time shining down on
Burlington, Vermont as it does in Arizona. But that doesn't mean renewable
energy is not possible here. I live in a house that uses both the sun and
wind as energy sources. Here are some data to show why:
Combine this information with another graph on wind data:
Solar and wind data courtesy www.crest.org
The next question people are concerned with is cost. Here is a cost
comparison, courtesy of Vermont Solar Engineering, that compares the
thirty year cost of a $10,000 RE system to thirty years of utility power
(which increases 10%/year).
Info courtesy Vermont Solar Engineering
So a house in Burlington, Vermont that uses both wind and solar energy
as it's resources for power might do well; when the wind is low the sun is
stronger, and when the sun power is low, the wind is stronger.
Click on this addresswww.uvm.edu/~dgoodyea/home.htm
These are some other links to websites that have information on Renewable
energy.
www.nrel.gov/pv/information.html
www.eren.doe.gov/irec/irec