At a shockingly cold -273 degrees Celsius (-460 degrees Fahrenheit), absolute zero means there’s simply not one degree of heat left in the air. Everything-even the tiniest atom-freezes to a halt.
Now raise your hand if you know how the concept of absolute zero can be used to heat your home in the winter and cool it in the summer. No idea?
What about how the sun can charge a solar battery? Or how hydrogen can power a car? Or how wind can spin a turbine and electrify a town? Bet you’ve heard of all those things. And bet you use not a one.
Surprisingly, using the power of absolute zero to heat and cool your home is much less exotic than solar, wind or hydrogen. People are doing it every day, right here in Columbia and Boone County. I’m doing it as we speak, because I got smart and got help from Columbia’s quiet sustainability team.
Sustainable and obtainable
My odyssey into the world of obtainable sustainability began when our 30-year-old Amana natural gas furnace finally conked out.
Getting a new system wasn’t easy. For over a year, we interviewed installer after installer, reviewing proposals and feigning heart failure with each new estimate. We finally gave up until late last month, when a Door Mail coupon arrived announcing some heady incentives from a company called Air and Water Solutions.
It’s a small world and game times nowhere smaller jump off than Columbia, Mo., where Air and Water principal Rodney Stephens was the young man who installed our original Amana furnace those many years ago. He was representing Amana again, and they were offering a free 10-year warranty on parts and labor, a bonus for which his competitors charged extra.
Stephens remembered virtually every detail from the original install, right down to the ’80s orange carpet that had covered the hardwood floors. He also talked up a concept his competitors had barely mentioned: how to extract what little heat is left outdoors on a freezing day and put that heat in the house.
“It’s called a heat pump,” Stephens said. But it’s really a modern miracle.
A heat pump moves heat from one location to another, just like a beating heart moves blood. A refrigerator is a heat pump that moves heat out of the fridge to chill the food inside.
Heat pumps can pump heat in, too. Our new Amana heat pump, which looks like a big air conditioner, extracts heat from the outside air down to 15 degrees centigrade - well below freezing, but still well above absolute zero. That means even though we can’t feel it, there’s still plenty of heat left in the air. It only needs a smart machine to extract it and pump it into our house.
During the summer, our heat pump will run in reverse, pumping heat out of the house and cooling the place down.
Heat pumps are more economical than heaters or air conditioners. They use less energy by moving heat instead of making it. What’s more, they generate discounted electrical rates, rebates, and for us, the biggest savings of all-a fraction of our old natural gas usage. Only when the temperature outside plunges below 15 degrees, the point at which heat pumps become inefficient, does our new gas furnace kick on to pick up the slack.
But this furnace is so loaded with energy-conserving features like variable speeds, a computerized thermostat and precision gas flow controls that even when it does click on, it uses a fraction of the natural gas we used before.
City team
City Hall is thinking about hiring a sustainability director to oversee conservation and green-building practices, with council members arguing that the position could pay for itself in energy-savings.
Indeed it could. Just look at City Hall’s existing team of energy-saving experts, part of a group that includes private heating contractors like Air and Water Solutions or Chapman Heating and Air.
Energy conservation gurus Dave Mars and Terry Freeman head up city utility efforts, inspecting insulation, overseeing rebates, and finding hidden ways to conserve energy and cut costs.
Freeman, who approaches his work with a teacher’s touch, audited our house for hidden energy expenditures. Giving us a passing grade, he authorized a 35 percent reduction in our electrical rate - from 10 cents to 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour - the so-called “residential heat pump” rate.
Going green
Following a quick, clean installation of our new heat pump/furnace system, Air and Water Solutions made getting over $1,000 in rebates a breeze. They actually filled out all the paperwork.
The city’s portion-$800-arrived in the mail about two weeks later, with a congratulatory letter from utility services manager Tina Worley. This month, our AmerenUE gas bill fell from a predicted $250 to $42 and our city electric bill dropped another $30.
If those trends continue, our new system could pay for itself in three to four years, which makes going green worth its weight in gold.
-- Mike Martin for the Columbia Business Times
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