Energy Efficient Lighting

Installing energy efficient lighting in your home may not seem like it can make an impact, but it truly can. If you think about the energy being consumed by lights in homes across the country, you can see how important it can be to use more efficient fixtures and bulbs in your home. Lighting generally accounts for between five and 20 per cent of your total household energy use.
Doing things like using high-efficiency fixtures (inside and outside), compact fluorescent bulbs, installing lighting controls and using LED lights for the holidays can make a world of difference when it comes to energy consumption.

Solar Hot Water

Solar water heater panels absorb energy from the sun and convert it into heat energy. The heat energy collected from the panels is used to pre-heat cold water before it goes into a home’s hot water tank. A solar water heater is able to provide approximately 50 per cent of a household’s hot water needs; therefore, most also have a second auxiliary heater. This helps to ensure that hot water needs are met when it is very cloudy or sun hours are reduced.
About 25-30 per cent of the total energy consumed in the average Ontario household goes to heating hot water. That makes water heating one of the most cost-effective uses of solar energy, providing hot water for showers, dishwashers and clothes washers.
Freeze-protected solar water heaters manufactured in Canada have been specifically designed to operate the entire year, even when the outside temperature is either well below freezing or extremely hot.

Geothermal

Geothermal systems or ground source heat pumps (GSHP) are an alternative to traditional heating and cooling systems fueled by oil, gas or other systems. One to two metres below the surface in southern Ontario the temperature is a constant 10 degrees Celsius year round. Using standard pump and compressor technology, GSHP’s extract heat from the ground and transfer it to the house in winter, and in the summer heat is extracted from the house and put back into the ground. A pipe runs from the house into the ground and loops back to the house, carrying a fluid that transfers the heat. No combustion is used in the process; the heat is simply transferred to and from the ground at very high efficiency. Today, geothermal installations are employed in residential, commercial, institutional and industrial applications.