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The hotel project I was writing about is also making progress. We are at a point of revising how he heats the indoor swimming pool. Currently there is a large capacity on-demand electric water heater doing all the work. I am proposing that we take this out of the equation and replace it with a gas fired on-demand water heater coupled with some major overhaul improvements.

I want to avoid going solar thermal by adding pool heater modules on the roof. This would only take away from the hotel looking at the overall solar PV possibilities. So I am sacrificing that potential sale for an even greater ROI on my involvement.

The proposal is to do the above switcharoo on the water heaters but re-plumb the pool through and existing unused 120 gallon gas fired water heater just sitting in the mechanical room.  Providing it is in good shape this would heat the pool water up to the state specified temperature and then as it passed though the on-demand gas heater it would get and extra boost before mixing with the body of water in the pool.

The other side of this fix-it equation is to keep the heated water at the pool surface during after hours. The pool closes at 10PM and opens again at 10AM. So I have a 12 hour window to combat the dehumidifier from sucking all that hot steamy air out of the room and replacing it with fresh air.  What to do, what to do.

Well a pool cover comes to mind the first thing. But I don’t want to add the burden of having the maintenance guy going in the pool room twice per day and manhandling 4-6 insulated panels.  I am searching for the idea of having post mounted from the floor to the ceiling at several locations around the pool. In between these post would be a blind or thermal barrier that pulled up and down depending on the time of day.  If I can reduce his pool heating bill from $15,000.00 to $5,000.00 per year then they may be inclined to go solar on the reat of the electric bill.

Now if I could figure out a way to offset those rooms heater/ac units.

What are your thoughts? Any engineers out there that would like to know the the details and offer suggestions?

Thanks

Stanley

Good news. But before I tell you let me fill you in on what happened a couple of weeks ago. On December 27th 2010 I was a guest on our local radio station. It was the talk portion, early morning for about 25 minutes. The host, Mr. Gregory, asked me several questions about solar and I was able to elaborate on the advantages and the great win-win situation that solar power really is. I wasn’t even nervous.

Out of that experience I received a couple of phone calls. One appointment ensued.  An older man that gets up with the chickens was listening and told his daughter who told her husband. Man, don’t you just love word of mouth advertising?  The called and we got together about cutting their electric bill by using solar modules. We are on our second meeting and I am providing education materials and references to help get them over the hump. The husband is ready to write a check for $45,000.00 but wants to see what kind of interest rate we can get him though our sources. That would be Regions Bank.

It’s really looking good and I am soooo excited about making my first solar power sale. What a way to start off a new fiscal year.

A few weeks ago I fond out from the Nashville solar company that I am repping for that someone I had sent out the mailers to called and wanted to have an appointment to talk about solar on his business. (note to self: I really feel like they weren’t going to tell me about it). Anyway. We called the owner and set an appointment. After a walk through of his hotel facility and gathering up 10 months of electric bills we set out to put together a plan to get solar power on this building.

The business is paying out over $5,000.00 dollars per month in electric bills. Most of the problem as we have learned is contributed to 3 areas. They have an indoor swimming pool that must be maintained at certain regulatory settings and the room the pool is in must constantly be dehumidified. With an exchange of fresh air every so many minutes. The other area is the individual room HVAC units. They are heat pumps with resistance strips as backup heat. When you combine all this together you are looking at a good 80KW per month base power demand.

The local electric company charges a higher rate per KWH for anything above 50KW per month. A whopping 13.55 per kilowatt hour. So our mission is to get things under the 50 kw bar. How can we do this?

Let’s start with the pool. An open body of heated water. A large bath tub if you will. It gets heated by what amounts to a industrial size on-demand electric water heater. This uses about 26KW at any given time when engaged.  Cover the pool as much and as often as possible. This would be a hassle for the staff and owner to fool with day-in and day-out. But would save a significant amount of money over a years time. However, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year someone would have to cover the pool at 10:00 PM and uncover it at 9:00 AM. It is doable is put into a daily maintenance plan. How many KW would this save. There is no real street level way of calculating it. Would just have to do it an see.

Next is a more practical approach and that is put a timer on the water heater. Set it so as to keep the pool at the minimum state regulated requirement. So for some time of the day it would be shut off completely. It would be easy to figure percentage wise as to the possible KW that would be saved in this option. The heater is off 30% then they would reduce energy consumption by about 20%. Because there would be an initial draw on current required to bring up the temperature of the water up the savings would not be a 1-to-1 ratio.

Third and best option is apply solar thermal to the equation. I propose that by adding a good sized solar thermal water heating package to the mix the owner would cut the cost of heating his pool by 100% after ROI time of 3 years.

Coupled with a 60KW PV system the whole package would run in the neighborhood of $410,000.00. By using the escalated depreciation schedule plan they would have the system paid out in 5 years.

What do you think? Is this something you are familiar with? Do you have experience with hotel facility energy consumption? I wold like to hear what your think. Leave a pertinent comment.

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When I approached the solar company I am selling for I was optimistic they would welcome the new door of opportunity in my county area. I thought so because there is not another solar power company here in a county of 95,000. But the events that have transpired over the past month indicate to me that the small Nashville based solar company is going down fast. What a #@%//*! problem this is for me.

First of all they cut my potential commissions in half. Next came the termination of the main office manager, because his salary was eating money needed for marketing. Then they cut the full-time plumber to part-time. He is now looking at going back to school for an IT degree. Hope for the best because the IT market is saturated with new graduates.

We’ve had three sales meetings and nothing tangible has come from them. It has taken a month to get an order in for more business cards. I’ve sent out 400 emails to the chamber of commerce and gotten NOTHING from it. We can’t get the lower priced American made solar modules due to all possible product being sent to Europe.

I am for sure looking at joining up with another company but I don’t need to approach them empty handed. Sure would be nice to make a sale.

Later.

FOLLOW THIS LINK IF YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN SOLAR ENERGY COMPANY.

It’s been a little over 3 months now since I started trying to find people in Wilson county that are interested in solar. The company I represent is in hard financial times and looks like it may go down. I’ve gotten a few leads locally but most end up being in Nashville, Franklin, Gallatin and so forth. Anywhere but Wilson county. So I’m wondering about finding someone to partner with and become independent consultants. On a home owner level. Persons interested in going solar would use a consultant to “guide” the home owner through the process. I’ve looked into opening a USA Solar Store here. It would be necessary to have a store front so people could see solar panels and solar water heater system and other solar products not only to turn sunlight into energy but to take steps to lower their current energy bills.  A solar store has a $75,000.00 start up price tag. Includes inventory and training and marketing. This is the target I want to hit. The problem is I don’t have any equity or cash to get the loan for the store fees.

I’m looking at finding some night work as a janitor or dishwasher to pay the bills while I continue to promote solar.

Well, I’ve long since wanted to attend the Louise Mandrel Home Show that takes place in Nashville TN each year. The company I am representing had a booth and I got to do a little hawking on Saturday.

What are my thoughts, what did I learn? Our booth was crowded. We did have a pretty cool set up with a solar panel and SHW system. The SHW installer guy built a stand wtih a solar panel on top soaking in the ambient light. That was being inverted to AC which was powering a couple of heat bulbs below in a box. The bulbs were heating up the water in a solar water heater panel which was being used to make coffee and tea.

We had a very small corner over in the far back of the show room. Right across from us was a couple of older ladies with a foot cushion booth. They would keep drawing attention away from us before I could even make eye contact with people walking in our direction.  So there were five of us at times standing in an area smaller than 4′ x 8′  Maybe one out of five persons approached us with a view to wanting to know about solar. Most of the time the wanted a price quote based on the square footage of their home. Well you can’t do that, or at least we don’t have a formula for that yet. Seems like it would not be that difficult.

(note to self: work on spreadsheet to come up with formula for determining PC price per square foot quote)

Other folks were just grabbing anything that was free, pen, or fliers or business cards. Some were only shooting the breeze about some aspect about solar that was unique to their own circumstances.  After a while I started talking to people just strolling by and asking them is they knew about solar or if they had any questions.  This worked to some degree. It allowed me to speak about what I learned so far which really helps to get it firmly etched in my own mind.

However, these are just “maybe leads”.  They are not targeted leads. I mean we had a sign up that said we were giving away a free 1Kw PV system. Well of course people are going to fill in an entry form even if they don’t know what a 1Kw PV system is.  Several of the folks I spoke to lived in another state. Not going to travel to Maine or South Carolina , or Alabama to do a quote.

While at the show I did a tour of the kinds of vendors and saw a nice cross-section of companies with plenty of good quality products. Some were more of the flea market caliber, but whatever, right.

I am formulating a mind set about this getting customers, no matter what the product. Working a booth at a show or fair or on the street corner is still cold calling and this does not have a sustainable level of viability. In short it barely works if at all. To be successful you must have people coming to you already informed about your product and ready to purchase.

I would rather be the only worm in a small pond of fish than with a colony of worms in a large lake. You know what I am saying here. To lure people to you sales page, your ad in the local paper, your voice on the radio, you need to start right in your own neighborhood. Locally. Which I’ve been doing by going house to house in good areas. But whose home during the day? Retired people who say “oh I’m too old to think about that”. Or kids with no parents around, which when I find this I get back in the truck as fast as possible and move on.

To get targeted leads you must help them qualify themselves by providing a way for them to think that they can not get by another month without looking into this solar power thing. It needs to be on the local radio station, the local newspaper and any other avenue available on a local level.

For example. Today I have to drive 72 miles one way to a guy that call our office because the company he works for is installing 4 million $$$ worth of solar panels on the company property. Good for that company. They see the light. But the guy that called and about solar live in a home that values about $83,000.00 on 25 acres way out in the county. He was told over the phone about how much a certain sized system will cost and still wanted to have us come down and talk about solar. In my eyes this is a qualified lead. AI just may be able to do business today.

We’ll see. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Well, today I started making contact from the leads I got from the Living Green Expo last Saturday. I only came away with three as I don’t want to be spending so much money on fuel running all over the place.

This morning I went into Nashville and did a site evaluation. The home owner has a perfect roof area. It faces almost due south. It’s not too steep and only minimal shading in the early spring. But she did want panels on that side of the home. So I looked at what is available from an East-West orientation. Not too good here. She has some dormers and a couple of areas that stick out from the main roof. Maybe I can get a small 1.38Kw system by spreading out the panels onto different areas. All will be getting the Eastern sunshine for the most part.

If she would reconsider using the front of the home then we would be looking at about 4 Kw system. Better for them and for me.

On the way to the call I had to floor it as I merged onto the interstate. One of my door magnets flew off and drifted to the shoulder of the road. When I went back after the call I could not find it. Man! those things are $40.00 each.  @#%*%@#.

More to come.

Today I worked the SolarTEK Nashville booth at the Living Green Expo in Franklin at the Franklin Factory. It was a lot of work but I had a blast. I never spoke to so many people about solar before.

We had a pretty good setup. I manned the booth all day and had a captive audience a couple of times. We only wound up with 10 calls to make but gave out at least 40 business cards and numerous other pieces of literature about solar.

Our next expo is at the HOME Show in Nashville latter in September.

I tell you that being put on the spot by total strangers about a subject you are not really an expert in will get your creative juices flowing.

That is the way I feel about now. I’ve been going around to prospective neighborhoods testing out the market. I walk up to the door with sales literature in hand and hope someone is at  home. IF they answer I introduce myself and claim that I am a solar energy consultant, although my business card says I am an “Energy Analyst”.

Sometimes they are interested, other times they say they had thought about looking into solar and still others just laugh and say stupid stuff. Just last week I had three older persons say that they were too old to think about any long term solutions and were just waiting on the grave. How depressing.

My strategy needs to rotate to a more qualified approach. I am going to use the directory from the local Chamber of Commerce and send out a letter of introduction for the company I represent. Another approach is to start with a classified ad in the local papers maybe two days per week for a month.  It will look something like:

Has the electric bill gone through the roof? Maybe it’s time to “GO SOLAR”  contact davenport@solarteknashille.com for a free energy analysis.

Or something like that. More to come.

After wasting a whole day working on my truck – the one I use to solicit solar – I headed out to Smyrna TN to keep an appointment for an energy audit. On the way my truck over heated and I had to pull off the road for a while.

A policewoman came over to check me out and told me where the nearest K-Mart was so I could get some more anti-freeze. After about 20 minutes of letting the engine cool I realized it was not going to start. I had run it so hot that the valves were beginning to rattle.

So I called my prospective client and let him know I was in trouble and would be late. He didn’t like it because his window of freedom was only for about one hour. A little while later a good guy named Webster wearing a white cowboy hat pulled on his white horse and offered to help. He took me over to the K-Mart store where I purchased 2 gallons of PEAK anti-freeze. We went back to my truck.

Poured both gallons into the system and started it up. All is well, no cloud out the tail pipe and no rough running problems. I’m on the road again.

I made it to the appointment 45 minutes late. The home owner briefly told me about his current energy consumptions and left for his appointment. I took the necessary pictures and attempted to climb up on the roof but decided with my record of accidents I would pass. So I counted the rows of shingles from the ridge line to the gutter and measured the house length, took out for the hip areas and did a square footage calculation.

Later that day I sent the home owner a quote of $56,000.00 dollars. I hope to hear from him by noon tomorrow. If not, then I will give him a call.

To end the day I went door-to-door in a couple of neighborhoods looking for homes that would be a good match for solar. One woman just laughed at me, took my flier and shut the door.  A man asked if putting solar on his roof would void his lifetime warranty. Another said they hired a crew to remove a solar water heater from their roof. Had to hire a crane to get it down. What a stupid shame.

Tomorrow I will rise early and get knocking on businesses.