Shawn Lessord’s home looks much like many others in Brockport. The front yard of his family’s rambling two-story home is filled with grass and other growing things. Two cars sit in the driveway, and children scamper about. A dog that welcomes visitors awaits a pat on the head.
What you might not notice is the wind turbine on one corner of the house or the solar panels on its roof. Since 2001, the Lessords and their two young children have used such devices and power-saving home appliances to cut the family’s consumption of power from their local supplier, National Grid, by more than half.
“We started in 2001 at about 14,800 kilowatt-hours,” Lessord said. “We’re down to about 4,800 now, with energy conservation and solar stuff.”
The kilowatt-hour is a standard measure of power consumption. The changes have cut the Lessords’ use of power from polluting sources, such as generating plants that burn fossil fuels or use nuclear fuel, and their costs.
“Our bills were about $160 a month,” Lessord said. “Now, they’re down to $80 a month.”
The journey to greater power self-sufficiency started with a single step – a solar-powered doorbell. While that might seem to be a very small step to take toward saving thousands of kilowatt-hours of electricity, Lessord said the original doorbell drew a “phantom load” of current, whether it was being rung or not.
“The average house has about 25 phantom loads,” he said.
Though a single phantom load might not amount to much, the power drawn by microwaves awaiting food to heat, stereos and televisions waiting for signals from remotes and cell phone chargers standing ready to charge our favorite communications devices 24 hours a day pile up over time. Lessord, a power systems engineer for a local communications company, installed the new doorbell. The small, flat solar array that powers it still sits on the side of the Lessord’s house, exotic looking but easy to miss.
Then, you might say, Lessord went in for home power generation in a big way. Since his solar-powered doorbell first sounded, Lessord has installed arrays of solar power collectors on the roof and in the backyard. The wind turbine and a device called an “inverter” converts the power they collect to a form in which the house can use. A bank of batteries – much like large car batteries in appearance – sits in the basement of the house, storing the collectors’ output for later use. In a power outage, they can supply the power the family would need to run its furnace, refrigerator and other basic appliances.
“We could go three, four days with no electric,” Lessord said.
When the collectors’ output is more than the family needs, the Lessords sell the excess back to National Grid at the same rate they’d have to pay if it was bought from the supplier. On a cloudy, fairly calm day last week, the collectors still put out fraction of a kilowatt-hour of excess power.
While generating a substantial amount of their own power, the Lessords have also cut their consumption through installing energy-saving home devices.
Small fluorescent lamps consume a fraction of the electricity of standard incandescent light bulbs. An on-demand water heater in the basement provides hot water when the taps above are turned on, eliminating the power needed to heat a tankful of water all the time. The Lessords’ furnace, refrigerator, stove and clothes dryer were all selected for energy efficiency, and Lessord recently installed a new stove in his living room that burns pellets of compressed sawdust, dried wheat, corn and sunflower seeds. With software upgrades, it should be able to burn other materials, such as switchgrass – an easily grown organic material.
“They’re going to be able to burn switchgrass and cherry pits,” he said, with a grin.
Lessord said the solar and wind collectors and energy-saving devices cost about $15,000, but the family’s electric bills have dropped by about 50 percent since 2001.
Reducing the amount of power used by American homes and industries could have a positive effect on the environment.
“Electrical production accounts for about 40 percent of our carbon output into the atmosphere,” said Mark Norris, an assistant professor in the environmental science department of the SUNY College at Brockport.
The use of efficient wood pellet-burning stoves could also help cut pollution.
“You can harvest trees sustainably because they’re a renewable resource,” he said. “The process of burning wood is a much more localized process and a much less energy-intensive process.”
Two years ago, Lessord founded Rochester Solar Technologies, a firm that installed home solar and wind power systems. O’Connell Electric, a local firm, bought Lessord’s company and he’s now the company’s solar division manager. This Saturday, the Lessord home will be open to those seeking to know more about solar energy collection systems. The home will be one of more than 400 in four states featured in the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s Green Buildings Open House.
“By educating people and showing people what can be done we can make a difference,” Lessord said.
It's not exactly an underground house, but it's close. Homeowner Dave Fulmer Wednesday took News 10 NBC's Ray Levato on an exclusive tour of an earth-sheltered home he's finishing in East Bloomfield in Ontario County.