Taking renewable energy to the streets
One of the stops on Saturday’s self-guided tour of renewable energy sites in Onondaga County is the nine electric car charging stations on Water Street, near the Erie Canal Museum. With a total of 120 charging stations around the county, there are more charging stations than electric vehicles. However, soon, plug-in electric cars could become more common on the Central New York roadways.
Barry Carr, coordinator of the Coalition of Central New York, likes to think Onondaga County is ahead of the curve with its 120 charging stations. He said, with more mainstream, affordable battery powered cars coming on to the market, like the Tesla Model 3 and the Chevrolet Bolt, charging stations will soon be in demand.
“The public charging is opportunity charge,” Carr said. “At your workplace, maybe at the grocery store, maybe at the movies, maybe at a public access park - that’s where people are going to use this. Part of this whole charging thing is psychological in that you’re not going to think about buying an electric car if you don’t see places to plug it in.”
That’s where range anxiety comes in, or worrying if the car will run out of juice before reaching your destination. Carr said the other factor that has made electric vehicles a tough sell lately is low oil prices.
“It used to be, to run your car on electricity, was about one fifth the cost of running your car on gasoline,” Carr said. “Now, it’s about half the cost. So, it’s still a good economic bargin.”
Tax credits can also soften the blow of electric cars' higher initial costs. This year’s state budget even includes grants and credits for residents and municipalities to go electric. However, even Carr admits he doesn’t want his town to raise taxes so their vehicles can have lower emissions.
“But, with the grant and the tax credits, if they can come out equal, and they’re saving on the cost of fuel, my taxes don’t go up, and emissions go down,” Carr said. “That’s the perfect thing for me.”
Bringing it back to the home-front
Syracuse environmental engineer Kyle Thomas has taken renewable energy into his own hands; his house on Tipperary Hill is one of the other spots on the tour. By implementing a geothermal heating and cooling system in his own house, the principal with Natural Systems Engineering hopes to show there are cost-effective ways to engineer and install such systems in old homes, in dense, urban settings.
“We’ve actually been struggling finding a driller that feels comfortable doing it,” Thomas said. “We have to address noise and just physical access, what to do with water that will come out of the well, and those type of things. But it would be great, after we finish this, to have this pile-up project under our belt, and then to be able to go and have a real world example about how we might apply this at other urban sites.”
Thomas acknowledges that it makes more sense to install such systems in rural areas where there’s more space.
“It becomes competitive with fuel, oil, and propane out in rural areas, so a lot of people find it very attractive just from an economic standpoint when you’re having to heat with fuel, oil, or propane or something like that,” Thomas said. “It’s more of a challenge in urban areas that are connected to natural gas, provided by utility. It’s tough to compete with the cost of that.”
Still, he’s giving it a try, even if state energy development officials aren’t quite on board.
“It doesn’t come back as something that they’re interested in funding or giving loan on because the return is so poor when you’re looking at drilling vertical holes and then the return relative burning natural gas,” Thomas said. “But they’re using rules of thumb that may not be very reflective of what can actually be retained in reality.”
And it’s that reality, the one where renewable energy can be feasible for city home-owners, that he’s hoping to prove.
The tour runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and includes over 20 sites featuring geothermal, solar, and wind energy in homes, farms, commercial buildings, schools, and municipal settings. Alternative fuel transportation sites and other efficiency technologies will also be shown. More information is available at the tour's webpage: www.ccawarenessaction.wordpress.com.
