February 26, 2007
Vermont Pioneer Makes Energy Smarter
by
Daniel Hecht

What does a pioneer look like? We usually think of covered wagons on the westward trail, but in fact they come in all shapes and sizes. And most don’t consciously decide to be pioneers: They just press on into new territory, moved by curiosity, pragmatism, or stubborn hope.

AJ Rossman is one of those. He’s 37, with unkempt sandy hair and a level, matter-of-fact voice. He often wears a rumpled, French-blue shirt embroidered with the name of his company, Draker Solar Design.

Like many other young entrepreneurs, AJ began on a shoestring. He mortgaged his house to buy the 70s-era passive solar building on Burlington’s North Street, then mortgaged the building to capitalize his business.

He’s raising two young kids, working on a Ph.D., growing his business, fixing up his building . . . Ask him how he’s doing, and he says “Just trying to keep the wheels on.”

People often talk about renewable energy generation, but AJ designs and manufactures something not many think about, yet: energy monitoring and management systems.

Just as you wouldn’t want to drive a car without a speedometer, gas gauge, and engine warning lights, you can’t use energy wisely without understanding where you’re getting it and how you’re using it. AJ’s integrated hardware-software technology allows you to put energy – and money -- where you need it, not where you don’t.

Draker Solar’s headquarters embodies the principle. Visiting 12 North, you’ll see the familiar sloped windows of older passive solar buildings. Inside, the foyer opens to the offices of several tenant businesses; the interior has a work-in-progress look, a mix of newly-renovated areas and rooms with rough concrete floors and unpainted walls.

Upstairs, Draker’s own suite is a chaotic combination of office and lab, scattered with experimental projects, potted plants, and high-tech equipment.

The whole building is part of Draker’s R&D process. It uses multiple energy sources: electricity from the grid and a solar photovoltaic (PV) array; heat from a gas furnace and the passive solar system. AJ has installed electrical and heat sensors throughout, so that he can determine where he’s “spending” energy and where’s he getting it.

A touch-screen monitor makes this information easy to understand with graphics depicting all the building’s spaces. When the solar PVs are exporting energy to the grid, lines of dots pulse away from the virtual building, and vice versa; bar graphs provide exact numbers of watts produced or drawn. AJ can also compare the furnace’s output with solar heat collected, allowing him to make the most of the sun’s contribution.

Tap the screen, and you can track any systems’ performance over the long term. A graph like the tracing of an electrocardiogram shows last month’s solar electrical production, rising from a flat baseline at dawn, peaking at a high plateau in the middle of the day, then descending again to the night’s flat line.

The setup also allows AJ to spot inefficiencies at a glance. If any part of the array is generating less than it should, he knows immediately which component needs adjustment or repair.

Astonishingly, with a few screen taps, he can do the same with a large solar array in Richdale, California. Lundberg Family Farms grows organic rice, and they monitor their 2kW solar PV array with Draker Solar’s technology. The system’s sensors upload data to the Web so you can read it here in Vermont, live, as it’s happening. For locations that are not Web hard-wired, remote telemetry technology bounces data to a cell tower and then feeds it into the Web.

You can literally tell when a cloud passes over the sun on the West Coast.

So, imagine your house in ten years, when energy is very expensive and clean sources are essential. You back up your woodstove with an oil furnace, and though you’re still on the grid, you have a solar PV array on the roof. From your computer, you can check the heat in every room and fine-tune zones, or measure PV input and decide if installing additional solar panels would be cost-effective. You can assess heating oil use and cost relative to your woodstove’s output, and adjust your thermostat or budget accordingly. You can track your furnace’s efficiency and give it a tune-up when needed, not after wasting oil for months.

It’s as easy as setting the oven to bake your lasagna, and you can do it from Brazil if you need to.

Next, apply that vision to your town’s municipal buildings and schools. Or your barn, factory, or greenhouse.

“With a few silicon chips,” AJ says, “you can manage energy intelligently – mainly, you can not use it when not necessary.” His unpretentious tone is that of the pioneer who’s too busy mapping new territory to concern himself with grandiose visions.

For further proof that pioneers aren’t always conscious of their role, ask AJ Rossman why he named his company Draker Solar. “I couldn’t think of a name,” he says, “so I just grabbed one off of the top of my head.”

Draker is the name of his dog, whose portrait still forms the company logo.

Copyright 2007 by Daniel Hecht

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