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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 112: Solar Solutions for Remote Living
What does it really take to break free from the grid and power your life with solar energy? In this illuminating episode, we're joined by Chris, the founder of Xolar, who walks us through the fascinating world of solar power systems with clarity that cuts through the technical fog.
The conversation moves beyond the obvious panels to explore the entire ecosystem needed for energy independence. From inverters that transform raw solar power into usable electricity for your home, to the critical differences between battery technologies that can make or break your off-grid dreams, Chris demystifies the components that many solar companies gloss over.
We uncover surprising benefits few talk about—like how solar panels actually extend your roof's lifespan by protecting shingles from damaging UV rays. For those with cabins in remote locations, Chris offers practical advice on sizing systems for minimal needs versus full modern living. "For just lights and a small fridge, four panels might be enough," he explains, "but maintaining your city lifestyle off-grid requires careful planning."
The discussion delves into the economics too, exploring government incentives across Canada that can significantly reduce costs, though Chris notes the stark difference in support for grid-tied versus off-grid systems. We even peek into the future where home battery systems might form "virtual power plants," strengthening communities during outages while earning homeowners passive income.
Whether you're a weekend cottage owner, a full-time off-gridder, or simply curious about energy independence, this episode delivers practical wisdom from someone who's installed systems from Newfoundland to British Columbia.
How did a small town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 1:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was punching.
Speaker 4:You so confidently.
Speaker 1:You said hey, pat, have you ever eaten a trout? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 4:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. But they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. People to live their lives under the canopy. Okay, first of all, as always, we want to thank our listeners all across Canada, the states all around the world, Switzerland, Ghana. Now I have to tell you in Ghana. I know we have a lot of reliable, faithful listeners in Ghana, but I told Dr Nick that I would let his people there know that he's a friend of mine. He has a health food store in Oshawa where he carries our Chaga product and he's now building and got a fairly completed, a 20-room hospital in Ghana that he's covering the cost and paying for and helping out rural Ghana, which is great to hear, and thank you, Dr Nick, for those contributions and making a difference in that country. But also we want to thank our listeners around the world, in Trinidad and Tobago, in the Bahamas and, as usual, of course, as I mentioned earlier, all across Canada.
Speaker 4:It's been a usual morning, Up at first light, I was out doing a firewood cut. Oh boy, I'm telling you, it's not easier, and the more I do it, the more I have to go see my chiropractor to get fixed up. I know I was in two days ago putting a rib back in my wrist fixed and my knee back in place, and it might be another couple of days before I have to go see him again because I just keep pushing on and pushing on and making it, abusing my body, shall we say. But it's that time of the year now where we'll be out harvesting chaga shortly, and I was with a mushroom seller who was showing me his chickens of the woods that he happened to harvest last week and I got to tell you though the lion's mane that we normally get on the beech tree up by our camp up in between Halliburton and Bancroft. No lion's mane this year, which is kind of surprising, but it's been a very, very dry year up there, and I noticed that there hasn't been as much of a wild flush of wild mushrooms that we normally see, been as much of a wild flush of wild mushrooms that we normally see.
Speaker 4:But also our gardens, our wild gardens, our living apothecary, as we call it the lemon balm, the sage, my mint patches are all due, the lavage is kind of done, but a lot of the other herbs and spices, all the herbs that we grow, are ready for harvesting and drying and prepared for their next stage. And that's where we consume them, whether it's the rosemary or the sage or the thyme or the, as I mentioned, my mint patches both peppermint and spearmint and lemon balm and all the rest of it, and, as well, I see a lot of mullein. Now I was with some people last Thursday that were having some lung issues and I mentioned to them that mullein would be probably the best thing for them. They were asking specifically about chaga and the impact there, but the chaga not really known. You know, getting rid of inflammation is probably the key component, but also the antioxidant level in it is so high compared to everything else.
Speaker 4:But when you get lung issues, mullein is the one that a lot of recommend. But I'm not a doctor, can't give medical advice, nor would I Follow what your professional healthcare provider says you should be doing, or even see a naturopath or your regular doctors to take care of those issues. But we get a lot of questions, as I normally do, and I had a lot of questions about off-grid living and wanted more information about it, and so today we have a special guest, Chris from XSolar, to talk about solar panels. Welcome to the podcast, Chris.
Speaker 5:Sorry about that. I had myself muted. How's it going, Jerry?
Speaker 4:It's good. Okay, so welcome to the podcast. You had yourself muted, so you're back on now. I'm back on. Oh good. So, chris, tell us for our international listeners, basically from Toronto, or are you in Toronto? Whereabouts are you located?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm in Toronto, that's right.
Speaker 4:Okay, and what's your position with the company?
Speaker 5:So I'm the owner of the company. I'm the one who started it.
Speaker 4:Okay, and so what is XSolar, what do you do and what is your company focused on?
Speaker 5:What do you do and what is your company focused on? So it's a solar panel installation company. We do probably 99% residential, though we are growing more into commercial. We have some projects kind of in the pipeline. So I would say that we are a national Canadian solar panel installation company, since we install from, you know, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, all the way over to British Columbia. We don't install in Quebec right now, but other than that we should have everyone covered.
Speaker 4:Very good. So in the territories as well, you get a lot of requests up there.
Speaker 5:Yep, we do cover the territories. We have some installers located up there. We don't get too many requests up there. Obviously there's not that many people up there.
Speaker 4:But we do have a project set to go in Northwest Territories. Yeah, that's good, because I know I did spend some time in the Yukon Territory and yeah, the population base isn't as large as it is in the rest of Canada. However, access to the grid up there is a lot more difficult, so I would have thought on a percentage basis of the population, there may be a higher likelihood of individuals utilizing solar.
Speaker 5:Bring up a good point. Individuals utilizing solar. Bring up a good point. Um, you know, part of it is because we haven't probably leaned into our marketing there as much as other places right, like ontario, like alberta obvious, you know solar hubs where there's a lot of people there too, right? Um, so it's probably I 100. Agree with you, though and that's part of the reason why I wanted to expand the company into the territories was because they have a lot of well high energy costs and also probably a lot of grid instability issues there.
Speaker 4:I lot both my buddies Bert and his brother, my other buddy, roley. Both have generators installed at their facility where Roley's living in Bert's cottage, simply because of the amount of downtime on the grid there that they want to make sure that things don't freeze up on them. So they had a generator backup.
Speaker 5:But solar is another option in that area, correct, solar is a fantastic option. It's also cost efficient. You know it pays for itself. Okay.
Speaker 4:So now what? So tell us, what are the basic components for necessary to install solar? I mean, we had Roger and Denise at the end of the lake where we were and they were completely on solar everything and I think they only had about 1200 watts of solar to run their entire facility, but they had a generator, backup and a battery system as well. So what kind of equipment does one need in order to be self-sustaining in solar equipment?
Speaker 5:does one need in order to to be self-sustaining, and solar. Well, I guess this is part of the things that make solar so confusing or intimidating for people is that there are quite a few different components in the system. Um, you know, just as an aside to the question I'll come back to, uh, it's actually hard to get financing for people for solar, because you could get a financing contract for your heat pump or your furnace, let's say pretty easily, they'll come and they'll install a new furnace or heat pump and you'll get put on a payment contract over 10 years or whatever. It is no problem because it's just the one product. But you can't get a deal like that with the banks.
Speaker 5:I've talked to them and tried, because the issue with the solar panel installation is that it's so many different products that all kind of get assembled together into the one system. So for the same reason, it can be intimidating for an individual. It's also kind of intimidating to banks and stuff as well. For giving you kind of like a financing for the whole system put together. Yes, of financing for the whole system put together, yes, um, but so to run through, what components are included, do you?
Speaker 4:want just the electrical components for, like, well, if somebody for me so say, for myself, I'm basically off grid at our place up in central ontario um, what do I need? To be completely self-sustaining with solar? So okay there. Okay, everybody just thinks the panels, but there's a lot more to it than just panels, and you get different panel sizes. And what kind of volume of panels do you need in order to be efficient?
Speaker 5:Okay, and so this is an off-grid system. There's no connection to hydro, that's correct. Yep, okay, so obviously there's the panels that go on the roof, and then you're going to need your mechanical hardware to actually adhere them to the roof or fix them to the roof permanently, right? So we, we anchor it right into the trusses and then you'll have your aluminum rails that the panels get clamped to. So, um, mechanically, that's kind of how it's adhered to the roof. And then so there's also a device called an inverter. Um, so what this does is the panels produce dc energy and your house uses AC energy, so it has to get inverted. So that's what the inverter does, quite simply. Okay, if all the devices in your house use DC electricity, you wouldn't need one.
Speaker 4:Okay, Are there those options available? So do they have DC fridges and DC stoves? I don't know DC fridges and DC stoves I mean.
Speaker 5:I don't know. I mean, there are DC appliances. Yeah, there are, they're not common. No, I haven't heard of too many people who have them. I remember one guy telling me one day there was like some conspiracy against DC electricity. I didn't get too many details, but it's a curious question. You know, dc versus AC? As far as I know, the reason why it's like that is because AC electricity travels further distance without losing as much energy to heat. I believe is the reason why. Okay, so you have your solar panels, then there's the inverter, which converts the electricity, and then, if you're off grid, obviously you're going to need somewhere to store the energy. So then that's where the battery would come in as well. In a typical system that's connected to the grid, you might not even need a battery because you can send all the extra power you generate that you don't use back to the grid, and that's probably 90% of the systems that we do, to be honest, are grid-tied. Most people are tied to the grid, right, everyone's getting credits on their power bill for their systems.
Speaker 4:Oh, so there's a program out there, because I know when it first started there was huge amounts of funds just to get people inspired to get involved in solar, so they get credits for what they contribute back to the grid still, yeah, they do.
Speaker 5:The program has changed quite drastically over the years. Okay and this is a large source of confusion for a lot of people that come to us for a quote as well is that the government kind of doesn't really have a set idea of what they want solar to be, so it's always flip-flopping and changing and one day it works like this and then the next day it works like this. Right, but so I think you're talking about the microfit program where, um, probably about 10-15 years ago, the government was like paying people, putting them on like 20-year contracts to buy back the electricity, yep, so that program ended in 2017. Okay, and now they have the net metering program, which is just, it's an agreement set up between the homeowner and the utility company. Where they will.
Speaker 5:You know you generate your power, you do your thing at home, you know you're privately using your energy, but as a convenience, any excess energy that you do not end up using, you can ship for export to the power company, to the grid, and they'll take that energy. You know they'll do what they will with. Know they'll do what they will with it. They'll power your neighbor's house or it'll get sent to a distributed network, but then they'll put a credit on your power bill for the retail value of that electricity Right. So it's not quite as ludicrously profitable as the old microfit program was, because they were paying way above market rate for the electricity oh yeah, it was like 60 or 70 cents a kilowatt hour, wasn't it yeah?
Speaker 5:yeah, well, it started at 82 cents and then it kind of every year kind of got brought down, lower and lower and lower, until it eventually the program got phased out so I'll tell you, chris, one of the things that happened with us is, um, I used to be an elected official with them.
Speaker 4:You know it was a privilege and honor to serve as Minister of Natural Resources and we were in opposition when the government brought it in. So I thought, hey, this is a great idea. And so I made application for the property we had just been talking about and we got approved. But all of a sudden the party took a strong stance against it and started to try to hammer the current government that was in power at the time about what a terrible program. So I just kind of had to back off. Otherwise, can you imagine the political implications if here we are slamming the government, yet one of the opposition members has taken advantage of it?
Speaker 5:so hey, yeah, I mean I, I can see why that might be strange from like a public you know looking point of view. But hey, you're, uh, I, if it was me, I'd be like hey, I'm a canadian too. This is available for canadians, I'm gonna use it. Why not? If they is available for Canadians, I'm going to use it. Why not? If they want to vote it in, why shouldn't I use it?
Speaker 4:Well, exactly. But yeah, the hard part is the political implications would have been pretty negative for the party and cost me a lot of problems. So we just had to quietly just let it fade away, which it did. But we were approved for that original 82 cents or whatever it was when it first started, but never followed through on it.
Speaker 5:No kidding. Yeah Well, there's people who are literally still getting checks from the government to this day from that program who got it in like 2007.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I recall a good friend of mine, gary Fox, was concerned. He was another MPP and I'm surprised that the government of the day because he would have been, he was no longer an MPP but he was an opposition party and he took out his farm. He put up a huge solar panel farm and was still to this day, as far as I know, still doing very well financially as a result of that.
Speaker 5:No kidding, yeah, I don't doubt it for a minute.
Speaker 4:So okay, so you got your solar panels, you got all your hardware to install, and how hard is it to install? Is this something that you can do on your own, or do you need individuals to come out, or how does that work?
Speaker 5:So you can definitely install the system on your own if you're a handy guy, but you're gonna need an electrical contractor to come in at some point, uh, to, like you know, do it all in the right way and pull your permits and make sure you have a licensed professional doing all the internal wiring in your in your house, panel and stuff right.
Speaker 5:Right. Also, you know, depending on how big your system is, if the voltage gets too high, you don't want to be messing with that either, right? But typically in like a residential system, you know you could do it yourself. You could, depending on how many panels you have, because each the way the systems are set up is, you'll have, like, let's say, you have 15 solar panels in your system.
Speaker 4:What size? Because I've got 15, 20, and 50 watt and 300 watt ones at home, so you got 15 solar panels, and roughly what size would you expect those to be?
Speaker 5:Well, right now, solar panels are in the like 400 to 500 watt range. Okay, so that's quite a lot like 400 to 500 watt range. Okay, so that's quite a lot bigger, probably, than what you have, yep, because they keep getting more wattage over time. Right, they keep making them bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 4:So you're looking at 1,500, 400 watt panels.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so that's like a 12 kilowatt system. I think our our average system size that we do is probably around 10 kilowatts, 11 kilowatts, something like that okay that will cover the average homes usage. Um, and that's we can get into that point. After, about how if with off-grid you, you probably want to actually oversize your system a little bit, okay, just because you don't have that grid to rely on for your peak power demands right um, so you do, to live the same lifestyle.
Speaker 5:You would need actually a larger system, um, but usually, you know, off-grid people are a bit more energy conscious, a bit more, you know, yes, paying attention to when they use power.
Speaker 4:So oh yeah. So a lot of the off-grid will have the solar. They'll have a backup generator and then wind as well yeah, yeah, um, so what was I getting into there? So you're talking about the, the, the size of the, uh, the 15, 15, 400 watt panels.
Speaker 5:Right, okay, so I was going to explain how, if you have 15 solar panels, it'll be divided up into like three different strings of five solar panels, and so the inverter that they get plugged into will have like three different inputs on it typically, and so you'll separate your solar panels into groups and then that's what they're called strings. Okay, so, so that way you know if you, if you have five solar panels that are plugged in together in one string, it's a lot lower voltage than if you had all 15 plugged in together. Yes, so it's not dangerous. You can install it yourself was the point I was getting at.
Speaker 5:Right, and you would have to obviously look up a guide, get some installation manuals on hand, maybe have a YouTube video open, and obviously you don't want to mess up your roof that you paid a lot of money on, so you do want to make sure you're pretty confident in what you're doing. You know, be able to find the trusses on your house so that you know where to drill Right. But this is all stuff that any you know. If you're a handyman type of person, you'd be able to figure it out, yeah.
Speaker 4:Right. So when you're talking roof, Chris, does it matter if it's a steel or a wood shingle or an asphalt single roof? Does that?
Speaker 5:play any difference in any of this. Well, the roof type does play a difference, but the ones you mentioned will all work, whether it's a metal. If it's a metal, steel roof or aluminum roof, or shingles or wood roof, that can all work right. Um, where we get into trouble is when, when you start getting into, like clay tiles or slate roofs, things like that, where they can shatter, yes, um. Or or where it's not quite a flat um base to install on, okay, yeah, um, um, because typically there's different types of anchors that we can use as well, depending on what type or how the roof looks.
Speaker 5:Right, if it's like an asphalt shingle roof, we can use a square foot, that kind of just like almost glues itself to the roof using weatherproof glue, glues itself to the roof using weatherproof glue. But if it's a wavy roof, like one of those Italian-style ones, it gets a bit more complicated. You kind of have to use a bolt that goes straight down, and so you'll find, when they put the roof together originally, there's already some bolts in place and so you have to take those ones out and then put the new one in. Okay, but we don't really like doing those like installs on those types of roof. It can be done, and we have done one or two before right, but it does pose a much more serious risk of leaking in the future, both because of the way that you're unscrewing the bolts that are already in place Right, but also the anchor it's called a T-bolt that you're putting in. It's not as weatherproof as the normal square that I was talking about, that kind of self-seals. Okay, that kind of self seals.
Speaker 5:Okay. So I would recommend that you do solar if you have a roof with enough flat space on it. So that's like a asphalt shingle roof or a wood roof or a corrugated metal roof. You know where it's like you have a ridge but then a big fat, a flat section in between all the ridges. That works perfectly as well. Okay, good, so that's, most metal roofs is like that.
Speaker 4:So I know, chris, we've got a metal roof at the camp we have in central Ontario and it's very much like you mentioned, the corrugated. But one of the things when people come in and on a sunny day we're sitting there, everybody says the same thing what the heck is that noise? The metal on the roof expands and contracts like crazy and you hear all this expansion noise. Do you get the same sort of stuff with the solar panels or not?
Speaker 5:really, no, I don't think so. That's an interesting question.
Speaker 4:I haven't heard anyone giving us that feedback, though, so I'd have to say no okay, and some of the other questions then is if you have asphalt shingles, when you use the panels, does it affect the shingles differently, or or is there some care or anything that needs to be done there to protect the shingles, or does the panels protect the shingles better, give better coverage?
Speaker 5:I'm glad you asked this question because it's actually a hidden benefit of going solar. Is that the thing that damages the shingles, I came to learn, is actually the sun. The sun is beating on the shingles all day. To learn is actually the sun, you know it. It, the sun is beating on the shingles all day and it dries them out and that's what causes shingles to curl and crack and go bad. Um and so by having the solar panels basically blanketing them, keeping them in the shade, it will preserve the lifespan of those shingles by a long, like a very long margin. Oh good, like you'll see people I mean, my company is only five years old but like you'll see people with much older installations, like, let's say, the Microfit at this point, and they'll take those panels off the roof and all the shingles will be that like healthy dark color, and then all the shingles around the system will be like grayed out and washed out and need to be getting replaced.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay.
Speaker 5:And that's just because it's protecting them from the sun.
Speaker 4:Well, chris, there's a lot of different technologies coming forward with panels as well, and I'm seeing these flexible panels as well. Are you familiar? Do you have those, or how does that work, or do you know much about them?
Speaker 5:I think you're talking about the ones that kind of like roll on onto like a vehicle roof or you can roll it onto your roof, kind of thing. Yep, exactly, I'll admit I don't know a ton about them. I assume they work because otherwise they wouldn't be made. Yes, I haven't done a ton of research into them, and the reason why is because they're not really carried with the main distributors here in Canada and also I'm not sure that they would pass an inspection currently. Okay, because when we're installing our systems now I might not be correct about that you know there's always different deviation requests. You can ask for with the inspectors, okay, but they do ask to see you know a certain amount of clearance off the roof. But they do ask to see you know a certain amount of clearance off the roof and that the wiring is not hanging on the roof and stuff like that. Right, and then the way it's, yeah. So I'm honestly not entirely sure how that would go with you know getting inspected and whatnot.
Speaker 4:But if the product?
Speaker 5:works. I yeah, yeah, I don't know much about it. It's. It seems like a good product if it actually works and lasts. That would be. My biggest question is how long will this last?
Speaker 4:yeah, I, I take, I I monitor, have a look at a lot of off-grid sites and it's something that I just noticed, probably in the last month, that they had these rollout shingles that just basically go on your roof, but I didn't know much about them To me. I always thought, and I've thought this, if actually the shingles were actually made of solar panels, everybody's roof would be ideal for collecting energy.
Speaker 5:Well, that's what Elon Musk's trying to build with the solar roof, with Tesla, right, but I think they're having some technical difficulties because I don't think they've scaled that up too widespread yet.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't know. There's you know, and you mentioned Tesla, but Nikola Tesla was the founder of AC electricity, alternating current electricity and the poor guy died. It was a genius, probably one of the smartest individuals around, and died penniless because everybody stole all his ideas.
Speaker 5:But I don't think he knew yeah, I don't think he knew it when he was alive how famous he was going to be.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, and and yeah, the more I look into Tesla and Nikola himself, the more I'm impressed with all the things that he was able to come up with, which has been great for society as a whole.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast that's right. Every Thursday, ange and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know, there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 7:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes All the other guys would go golfing.
Speaker 3:Me and Garton Turk and all the. Russians would go fishing.
Speaker 1:To scientists. But now that we're reforesting- and laying things free.
Speaker 7:It's the perfect transmission environment for life.
Speaker 2:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste. And now it's time for another testimony podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we're with Bev here in Lindsay, and, bev, you've got some experience with Chaga that you'd like to share with some people. Tell us two stories. Can I start with your father's story?
Speaker 6:Hi, derry. Well, my dad had mentioned to me that he was struggling with his blood pressure and he'd gone on meds and it wasn't bringing it down. He was running around 180, 185 and wasn't enjoying that at all, and so I suggested that he try the chocolate tea, because I knew some other people that had had a good experience with it and I knew my own experience with it. He started doing the chaga tea every day. He stuck it in with his coffee, so he only had to drink one thing a day, and within three weeks he had dropped from 180 to 140, which he was really excited about. But what he was even more excited about was that about three to four weeks after that he had gone down to 125. So we're really grateful for the difference that Chaga has made with his blood pressure.
Speaker 4:Good and he wasn't doing. There wasn't any other medications or changes.
Speaker 6:No, no, this was the actually the only shift. He didn't shift anything diet wise, physical exercise wise at all. The only thing he added in that he hadn't been doing before was chaga.
Speaker 4:And he put it in his coffee.
Speaker 6:I believe I heard you say, and he put it in his coffee.
Speaker 4:Yeah, very good. Okay, and you have your own story. Now I have my own story.
Speaker 6:So I started on chaga when I met Jerry, just as I realized that I was going into a relapse of multiple cirrhosis, that I had not relapsed for approximately 25 years.
Speaker 6:So I was a little startled about it and wanted to get on it. And so I was in the process of changing a lot of things so that I could go back into relapse rather than dealing with the MS symptoms. And so I did change diet and I stopped physical exercise so that my body would have more rest, and I added the chaga in and within a within a, I mean within five days I noticed that the nerve sensory issues I was having in my legs was already settling down and within about three weeks I had the strength to walk unassisted again. And I am about three months in now and I have taken a 10-day break from it a couple of times, just to you know, you know, just so that my body yeah, you know can stay balanced. You know, without it, sure, but every time I go back on it, I, um, I can feel the difference in mental clarity and in the way my nerves are communicating and I'm walking very, very well now.
Speaker 4:Very good. Well, thank you very much for sharing your story with us.
Speaker 6:Thanks for hollering me and asking me to try a free cup that one farmer's market morning.
Speaker 4:Well, I'm glad it's working out for you.
Speaker 6:Thanks.
Speaker 4:Jerry. Okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. To do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode. Around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode.
Speaker 4:So somebody who has a small cabin, like I'm talking because I get a lot of people like who are remote individuals, trappers and things like that and all they run is basically a light system, a DC light system in their camps or outback camps and things like that. In Ontario there's land use permits, camps that are out there that usually have a lot of small needs. What size would you need? You know everything's relevant for the time that this would go to air. What kind of cost are you looking at, basically to put up a basic system just to run your lighting system, sort of thing?
Speaker 5:Well, you wouldn't need a big one, that's for sure. So our company basically specializes in I think five kilowatts is the smallest system that we'll do on a on a residence and that's just to make it commercially viable for us and like the the different costs and stuff that we have, right. But if you were looking to do it yourself and you just wanted to put together a small system, you could do something for relatively cheaply. You know, and they have these products all online that are good products that you could get privately and install and they'll work for you. But you know, if you're just running lights and maybe like a freezer, you probably would only need a handful of solar panels. I'd say like, maybe like four solar panels.
Speaker 5:get yourself like a one to two kilowatt system okay um, and, based on what you described, honestly think that would be sufficient, I mean, if you're really not using too much power, you know. Once you get to the point, though, where you're, where you want to have, like um, you know you want to to have regular household appliance type stuff. You want to have a regular lifestyle.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 5:That's where you're going to need to upgrade to your 10-kilowatt system, because then you're running heating and you're cooking and you've got computers going and TV and the fridge. So the modern kind of household does have a higher energy demand. But if you're living a lifestyle where you can cut a lot of that stuff out, you really don't need much. And the other thing too is that for off-grid specifically, the number of solar panels is almost kind of not the right question. Okay, the right question is actually how much battery storage do you need?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was my next question is the type of batteries as well. I mean, I've seen it. My father, he was on Monk Lake and they were building a new camp at the North End and they had like 15, 20 car batteries in the basement where they stored all their solar panel electricity because they were off grid up there. But what kind of batteries do you use? And this was probably 25 years ago, sort of thing.
Speaker 5:Car batteries. You said right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they were car batteries. Well, at least when you look at them. I didn't talk to them specifically to ask, ask, but when you looked at him and you looked in the basement you thought those are all car batteries it's funny.
Speaker 5:I'll. I'll go on a tangent quickly. I was playing a online video game with a guy um a few years ago and he was. He actually worked for Tesla. Um, he was an engineer. He's. He's from, uh, he's from overseas. He came to live in America, um, from some country, and he's now an engineer at Tesla. But so he um, there was like scrap batteries in their warehouse or factory or whatever, and so he got his hands on one and he actually converted it into, like a solar battery.
Speaker 5:Okay, because the tesla batteries that go into their vehicle, um, you know that they can be used as a battery and you know they're even developed, like tesla themselves are developing technology so that you can charge your home with your car, so you can kind of use your vehicle as your battery at the same time. Um, so it's interesting that you said that because, like, I think that's fascinating that you can use your vehicle battery dual purpose for your car and your house at the same time. Right, so that's something coming in the pipe for the listeners. That that's kind of on the way. But to answer your question more directly, you definitely want to go lithium ion, because the lifetime on those batteries is a lot longer than the lead-acid batteries, right. And the other thing too is in terms of the cost, people will be like, oh well, I don't want to buy a lithium battery because it's so expensive. But in truth, because with lithium you can drain the battery all the way to 100%, nearly Right For every like one kilowatt hour of battery storage.
Speaker 5:How do I say this?
Speaker 5:What's the best way to put this?
Speaker 5:So, like when you're, when you use a lead acid battery, if, if you get a one kilowatt hour battery, you can only actually drain it halfway to like 50 percent, um, and because if you go below that you'll start damaging the chemistry of the battery and it won't, and then it'll lose shelf life.
Speaker 5:So it'll start lasting less and less time, kind of like your phone I don't know if you have a smartphone or what but over time that you'll notice the battery kind of doesn't last as long, and then you have to start charging it more often and more often and more often. And so that kind of happens to batteries over time is that they start losing charge quicker, and that can really happen to lead acid quite badly if you start draining it below about halfway, and so lithium doesn't have that problem. You can go down to like 95%. So when you're comparing the price of a one kilowatt battery lead acid versus a one kilowatt hour battery lithium, you're actually getting twice as much storage or effective storage with the lithium battery. So you have to factor that into the price as well.
Speaker 4:Interesting and some of the other things, though is do not the lead acid batteries give off off gases as well that need to?
Speaker 5:be vented out. Yeah, they do, they do.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because that was one of the things that I understood was a bit of an issue as well as OK, so you got all these batteries. How do you get the gas? That's not good for you to vent it out elsewhere not good for you to vent it out elsewhere?
Speaker 5:Yeah Well, it definitely serves an interesting logistical question if you have, you know, a bunch of batteries stored floor to ceiling, yeah, Like a server room or something. But most people you know probably don't have that many batteries.
Speaker 4:Right, right, yeah, this, you know, was just kind of surprising. It was, as I said, well, it may even been longer than 25 years ago, when first solar was first you know distant conceptual ideas that I saw this stuff. That was quite surprising, yeah, so, chris, tell us the difference. Ok, so you mentioned like a kilowatt battery. Is that what I am I saying it correct? A kilowatt battery?
Speaker 5:Well, the kilowatt hour is just the storage capacity of the battery. That's how you'd kind of like compare the different sizes.
Speaker 4:Right, so what size batteries are there?
Speaker 5:Any size. Yeah, usually they're modular. You can get batteries that are small, batteries that are big. You can have a bunch of small batteries and wire them all together right um, kind of depends on the product you're using and if it's built to be modular or if you're going for more like a power wall type of battery, where it's just one big unit of course. I mean, evenwalls are modular too. You can connect two Powerwalls together.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know I did a number of sportsman shows and actually they were showing. Basically, if you looked at it, it looked like a car battery, but they're all single units that you put specific batteries inside them. Yeah, yeah, and I think it was lithium, if I remember correctly yeah.
Speaker 5:So like, if you're off-grid you're not going to be using a power wall um, but you'll use like batteries like that, right, or like those small car battery looking ones, um, make sure it's lithium, and then you can kind of just choose a good priced battery, right, and you can um just connect them to each other, right. So so the amount of battery storage that you need, it depends very, it varies widely depending on your usage. You know, and this is a tough question to give like a one-size-fits-all answer, because your viewers, if they're all over Canada, they're in different countries, their usage is all going to be different. So for you, I could say, or for that trapper you're talking about, where they're not using much, I could say you could do with one battery. Get like a three-kilowatt-hour hour battery, one kilowatt hours of solar, you're going to be able to power your lights in your fridge or whatever you like.
Speaker 5:Basic, basic necessities right um, but no high powered loads. But then you know, if you're trying to run a house, modern living, computers, tv, I would say you're probably going to want to at least a 10 kilowatt system. You know, you, you get away with like a seven, eight kilowatt system too, but but the battery storage you don't want to skimp out on um, because the solar panels will be working even when you're not home. You know, let's say, let's say you leave for a week, you come back, your panels have been working the whole time, so it actually kind of matters more how much battery storage you have, and it's.
Speaker 5:This is kind of what we do at zoller, is we help people match, like we help people figure all this stuff out, because you know you might use 10 000 kilowatt hours annually and need a system that can offset that much power demand, but someone else might only need half of that, right? So we we have to look at, okay, what is this household using? Or you know, if it's off grid, we would have to say, okay, what appliances are you using? And we'd have to literally look at those devices and grid. You have to go about this in a very scientific way, because if you get it wrong. You don't have the luxury of the grid just supplying your surplus, right, you know? If you're like, okay, well, my solar panels don't cover my peak demand when I'm starting up my heat pump, but it's okay, because I'll just pull the extra energy from the grid that I need and then the solar will cover everything else. When you're off grid, you don't have that option, so you have to really make sure that your system covers what you're doing in that house.
Speaker 4:Right, and I remember I mentioned Roger and Denise on the lake and they had, I think it was, 1200 watts and Roger or Denise was telling me she said, well, we had to change, or she had to change a lot of the way that she managed things. For example, if she wanted to do laundry, she had to wait until the sun was at its peak in order to be able to run all the facilities, as opposed to, say, doing it in the evening, when she normally would when she was at home.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. You'll have to make adjustments like that because you know you're getting your peak power in the middle of the day.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:So that's when you're going to want to do all of your peak power demand activities.
Speaker 4:So what about things like overcharging? Is there protectors so that they don't overcharge, or can lithium batteries be overcharged?
Speaker 5:So that's an interesting question. As far as I understand, if you're overcharging the battery, it will. So there's a device in between called a charge controller, right, which kind of helps modulate how much energy the battery is taking. Modulate how much energy the battery is taking, and if you're if you're um generating too much electricity, it will start to dissipate as heat. Um, however you do, that is that is a problem, and you do want to make sure that you're balancing how much energy that you're generating with how much power storage that you have. Right, you know you don't want to.
Speaker 4:You don't want to like have a million solar panels plugged into a small battery and then explode the thing or fry the thing right, I know I was at a fishing camp up in northwestern ontario that had a diesel generator uh, and that might be, you know, an area that a lot of these outpost camps that run off, basically a lot of them generators but they specifically said, look, please do us a favor and leave all the outdoor lights on, because when the generator is running they have to make sure that they're using enough of the facilities out there to burn up the electricity that's being generated. So to make sure that the base load was being taken care of.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so with these batteries, chris, do you have to worry about winter freezing or temperatures and things like that?
Speaker 5:You do. You do so. Every battery product is going to have a data sheet that comes along with it that will say you know this product can operate down to zero degrees or negative 20 degrees and then. So you're going to want to manage that, because that's going to help you make sure that your batteries live the lifespan that they're supposed to, right? So you're going to want to follow the manufacturer guideline, depending on the product that you have.
Speaker 4:Okay, so there's a lot of options out there as well, and I see as well that when I first started looking at the price of solar you mentioned about it it's constantly fluctuating and things like that I imagine because solar prices have come down per panel considerably from when that time when it was, you know, the microfit program came in, to what a cost of a kilowatt hour on a panel now is. Is it the same for batteries as well?
Speaker 5:I would say so, yeah, so again, we primarily do grid tied systems, and so the most popular battery that we sell is actually the tesla powerwall. Okay, um, so this is a 13.5 kilowatt battery and, um, I mean to get it installed. It's not cheap, it's probably a $20,000 job.
Speaker 4:And that's for the entire package, or is that just the battery installation?
Speaker 5:That's just the Powerwall alone. Okay, yeah, but the Powerwall is a heavy-duty battery. It's meant for a modern house where you're using a ton of electricity.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:And it can run your whole house for like a day or something like that okay um, but if you're, if you were just doing a smaller system with a few lithium iron batteries, it would be. I think the grow watt battery is like I think it's only a couple thousand dollars per each one, okay, and they're modular. So you could scale it up to be a $20,000 system with like 10 of them, but you don't have to, and that's part of the benefit of maybe a system like that is that you can start smaller and then kind of add to it over time, right?
Speaker 4:So somebody going away, say to a cottage that wanted to do this, where they go up for the weekend, uh, through the week when the sun's out, it would be charging all the batteries, and when you showed up on for your weekend they would be pretty much fully charged.
Speaker 5:You know, if it's the weather's right, exactly, and so that's why it's important to understand how you're going to be using the energy in the place, because, like a weekend cottage type of property, you would want more battery storage and less solar Right Because of exactly what you just said.
Speaker 5:You know you're not there to use the power, so you need a bigger battery bank and relatively less panels themselves. But if this is an off-grid property, by contrast, where you're actually living there full-time and you're doing laundry and you have all these energy needs, you would actually need more solar panels relatively just to make sure that you have enough to cover your peak power demand, like the lady you're talking about how she has to do her laundry at noon because that's when she gets the most power. So it's the same kind of idea If you can get away with not being there for a long period and you can just get it to fill your batteries up, and then you can basically operate wholly off the batteries for the weekend that you're there, and then, once you leave, the batteries are drained, but then they have another week to recharge.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:Yeah, versus, if you're living there every day, draining the battery every day, then you're going to need more solar panels, okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so very interesting. So, chris, when I'm looking at different things, I see what is it pure, sane or sane type of? Is that a panel? Is that a type of panel? Am I off on this? Am I?
Speaker 5:talking about. I'm not sure about the pronunciation of that. How do you spell it?
Speaker 4:uh, s-i-n-e, I think it is s-i-n-e.
Speaker 5:That's a brand of solar panel. I haven't heard of this uh, well, no, just uh.
Speaker 4:there there's different types of panels that produce different types of electricity and believe it is, and there was, I think it was pure sane. It was the one I was thinking of, but I was wondering if there's much of a difference, and can those systems be interacted?
Speaker 5:Hmm, do you mean sine? Is that like an inverter thing? Is that what it is? Yes, like a sine wave, like sine versus cosine kind of thing.
Speaker 4:yeah, pure sine a wave inverter uh, inverters, yeah so.
Speaker 5:So with inverters the electricity is a waveform. So I mean it's funny that I have all this knowledge built up over time. Um, I didn't learn any of this in school. Of course not, but so sine wave versus cosine wave is the waveform has to match between all the components in the system for them to be compatible with each other.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:And so that's part of what like a charge controller will do. If you're bringing in dirty, know dirty dc electricity, it needs to get quote-unquote cleaned up, which is basically converted to the right waveform. And that's basically what your charge controllers and your inverters are doing is they're converting the electricity to make sure that it's the same waveform that can be compatible with all the appliances in your house.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:Because, let's say, your computer is, when it's receiving energy, it's expecting that energy to come in a certain format, and if it doesn't, it won't even work. Okay, right, so that's what these inverters are doing, is they're making sure the waveform of the electricity matches the waveform that your devices are expecting in your house.
Speaker 4:So do all solar panels perform the same waveform, or are they different? Panels produce different waveforms.
Speaker 5:Well, I think that's what the whole conversion between DC and AC is about. I think that's what the whole conversion between DC and AC is about. Honestly, I think that question is probably a bit outside my pay grade when it comes to this stuff. What I do know is that you have DC and AC which are incompatible. It needs to be converted. And what I do know is that if we go installing solar panels of different sizes and plugging them in together, they will rate limit each other to the lowest common denominator, okay. So if you have like a 500-watt panel plugged into a 400-watt panel, it'll actually bottleneck at 400 watts, the whole string, okay. Watt panel, right. It'll actually bottleneck at 400 watts, the whole string, okay.
Speaker 4:So I don't think that's the same thing, but it's kind of along the lines of you know, backwards compatibility with different components and stuff like that right, yeah, and I know there's, um, I'm looking for myself just a sauna that, uh, is not connected to the grid in an area, that there is no grid in the area, and try and put panels in there and just run lights in the sauna. So try and figure out what size panels and what batteries to use to run lights and things like that and I often wondered about. So that's the inverter that deals with the panels, to make sure that whatever energy is being produced is converted into what can be utilized.
Speaker 5:Correct, yeah, okay, so in that situation you'd want to go and check all the different light bulbs and see what's the individual power consumption of each one, both the peak startup demand and the operational demand, and then you would have to kind of add them all together and come up with a number, and then that number will inform you of how many panels do you need and how much batteries do you need.
Speaker 4:Right, okay, interesting, very good. So, Chris, is there support out there for uh, going solar, solar? Is there government programs to support any aspect of this at all throughout canada?
Speaker 5:uh, there absolutely is now off grid, I think, has limited support. Um, they have programs, tons of programs for grid-tied, but I think off-grid is a blind spot for these government programs. Okay, so I mean, there's the Greener Homes loan right now which is actually going away in October so it's bad timing where they were giving $40,000 interest-free loan to people so that way you could finance your system, uh, for low monthly payments yeah, you mentioned there was difficulty with banks, so that kind of that's I, from what I'm hearing from you, that this is designed to to deal with the banking and getting loan issue.
Speaker 4:Is that a?
Speaker 5:system that? Yeah, exactly because other than aside from the greener homes loan, what people have to do is just get a line of credit. You know, in in the states they have different um financing companies that will give you different loans 10 year, 12 year, 20 year, whatever it is. They have lots of options, but here in canada we don't have too many. So it's like either you get either you get the greener homes loan or you get yourself a line of credit with the bank. That's basically your only options, because it's hard to get financing for the system specifically in the same way that you might get financing for a car or your heat pump okay, yeah.
Speaker 4:so yeah, because I understand that there's programs available now for things like heat pumps, but support programs, and I don't even know if that's the same throughout all Canada or not.
Speaker 5:So other incentives that are available in Ontario you can get up to $10,000 if you do a grid tied behind the meter system.
Speaker 4:What does that mean behind the meter system?
Speaker 5:A good question. So what it means is that you know how I was telling you about the net metering program, how you can use all your power and then the extra gets exported to the grid. Yep, so it's kind of like that, but you can't export it to the grid anymore. You have to use it all within your house, so.
Speaker 5:So what that means is that you have to pair it with a battery okay yeah, so, so typically, it'll be a power wall system where you have your solar panels in your power wall and, um, either, in the settings of the system, it'll be set to zero export so that you don't send any power back to the grid, right? Um, and the reason why they're kind of shifting towards that type of program is because I think the honest answer is because the grid is aging and with all these people putting solar panels in and generating all this power, um, they're gonna, they're gonna have to start upgrading the grid infrastructure. So they're kind of pivoting, and now they want people to just offset their own consumption, which would actually act to reduce the load on the grid, because now, if all these houses are self-sufficient and are not pulling from the grid, then it reduces the net energy demand on the grid itself.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:But if all these houses were putting extra energy on the grid, then it wouldn't really solve that problem.
Speaker 4:Right. Yeah there's a lot of grid stuff that I got involved with before. For example, a lot of people don't know what line loss means when you're talking on the grid.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 4:So we use my place in central Ontario but kind of halfway between Bancroft and Halliburton, If the energy in order to charge the grids coming from being here by Toronto, the nuclear plants at Darlington or the nuclear plant in Bickering, there's a lot of lines and distance for that electricity to get up there. However, if there was sources of energy that were much closer, it reduces that and takes a lot of strain off the grid to make it more available. And solar, from what I'm hearing in rural Ontario, would be in a really an effective way to reduce line loss and charges that are used to carry all the energy those distances well, you hit the nail on the head it's, it's.
Speaker 5:it's an interesting benefit of solar.
Speaker 5:You know, if you, if you look at the top down picture and you don't think about just the individual in the household offsetting their own usage, but the kind of aggregate effect of if everybody's doing this right, it really would reduce the strain on the grid itself.
Speaker 5:And then also, because you're producing that power locally, um, you know, let's say you are on the net metering program where you send your extra energy to the grid. So, um, you're powering your house. Let's say you have some extra energy that you're not currently using in real time. Instead of that having to go to some far off area, right, yep, it can literally just go into the transformer and then to your neighbor's house, yes, yep. So there's an advantage to that when everyone's producing energy locally and also storing energy locally, because in the future, if everybody has a battery on their house. I don't think they have any programs like this here in Canada yet, but the United States, they're years ahead of us on this stuff with the solar and battery adoption. Okay, but their utility companies actually have like virtual power plant programs where if you own a battery, you can opt in with the power company and they'll essentially pay you to take control of your battery.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay.
Speaker 5:And so you know, if they're doing this with a thousand people, that becomes kind of a significant source of battery storage for them. Yep. And so they actually pay people to do that.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:So, like you store your excess power in your battery and then you can. There's like some setting where you can say, okay, I want to basically donate 50% of this to the power company and then keep at least a 50% storage for myself or if I need it. And so people in the United States are doing this, where they're just sending all this energy to the, they're leaving all this storage capacity for the power company, and then what the power company will do is you know, you were talking about um base loads and stuff like that they'll, they'll use everybody's collective battery storage to regulate um the like peak energy production times, and then when it gets later into the day and it's there's less energy being produced, then the batteries will um drain and then, you know so, to help meet that peak power demand without actually ramping up production of power. Well, because then the question is, where does all this power go?
Speaker 4:you know, so having all that extra battery storage in aggregate allows the utility to be very uh flexible with things like that well I, I know, chris, that, um, when I was minister of natural resources, one of the issues it was a company that was ran, a company that ran a mill in northern Ontario and they had their own power plant to produce electricity to run the mill. And what I mean is a lumber mill, and I can't remember if it was like a two-by-four mill or if it was a veneer mill or a chip mill, what it was like a plywood sort of mill or a chip mill, what it was like a plywood sort of mill. But anyways, they wanted the ability to be able to sell energy on the spot market because their hydro and this was a dam was a hydro dam and what they would do would be, all of a sudden, new York City, for example, would be in huge demands and paying about $2,000 a kilowatt hour for electricity in order to supply the demands there on short notice. So they wanted the ability to sell on the spot market like that, because it was cost effective for them to ship that electricity that they produced.
Speaker 4:In that case the discussion was New York City and my response was well, what happens to the factory when you do that? They said well, we make more money selling the electricity than we do running the factory. And I said, well, no, I wouldn't support that, because what you're doing now is all those people that are working in the factory would now be sitting or being unemployed or not being paid, or all the trucks or all the forest industry doing all the harvesting and everything else, just because you're making more money selling the energy, and I wouldn't support that. But yeah, so certainly these options like this for rural municipalities, for example, that they could really support a lot of the grid if they had a promotion program that for the line loss and everything else, it could keep the lines charged and a lot more energy in high demand areas such as urban Toronto and all the other factory areas around.
Speaker 5:Yeah, toronto itself doesn't lose power too much, unless there's a storm or something. But you know, know, there was just this winter there was, I think the headline was a million houses without power. Yep, um, from the ice storm that knocked down some power lines and there was people who didn't have power in their house for quite a while after that, and so, um, I just actually learned Hydro One installs power walls on people's houses who lose power a lot. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that until recently either. Actually, I don't know if they just started doing this or if it's something they've been doing for a while, but they'll actually just come and install a power wall for people and and that might be like if they're within their service area but for whatever reason, they lose power all the time right to, kind of like, fulfill their obligations, I guess right um, but it's uh, you know, with it's, it's funny how we have this whole modern society.
Speaker 5:You know it's built off of this, like rickety old infrastructure, like this rickety old electrical grid which can kind of get knocked down when the wind blows too hard. Um, so, having battery storage built in and baked in, so to speak, to not just individual homes but into society at large yeah I think could go a long way at some point.
Speaker 5:You know, obviously not now, there's not enough people, but there would be a critical mass at some point where if you, if you could, if the utility could have these like collective agreements where everybody could opt in like, okay, if the grid goes down, if there's another one of these storms, we have collective battery storage that we can use to help these people who are stuck without electricity in the middle of winter. You know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and there's so many other aspects about it that are not taken into consideration. I recall I was working a by-election for Doug Holliday when he was running in Etobicoke and we were door knocking in an area but the power had been out because it was, I think it was August and it had been a severe rainstorm where they took out huge amounts of power lines just because of the volume of the rain. And it was in August. And so I knocked on the one door and the guy answers the door and he says when's the power coming back on? I said well, sir, this is not the right level of government that deals with this. This is your Toronto hydro issue and I can't give you the answer.
Speaker 4:And he started to complain. He said well, that's it. I says I'm just going to lose it. I guess that means we're having a block party and I'm going to lose all the food in my fridge. And I just looked at him. I said well, why don't you just go buy a block of ice and put it in a tub and you put it in your fridge? And he looked at me and said what I said yeah, it'll keep the fridge cold and keep your food, so it'll stay in itself and don't open your freezers. I mean, if you need to, you can put dry ice in the freezer to keep everything frozen there, but there's a little bit of tricks to get dry ice. But he said that'll work and I said, yeah, it works perfect. I mean, when we go up north, all we do is we have ice and coolers or old fridges to keep all our stuff cold, and this is stored energy of another type that people can utilize, and having these solar panels with battery backups would go a long way in situations like that as well.
Speaker 5:Yeah, putting ice in a bucket. It's ancient knowledge.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, he was shocked that anything like that could what. That's all it would take. I said, yeah, go to the grocery store and buy a block of ice and put it in a tub and it'll keep everything cold in the fridge. Really, I said, yeah, I'm going to tell everybody on the block.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but no, it's important to be resourceful in situations like that, but it's also important to consider having battery storage. I think that as we kind of move into the future, with electrical demands only going higher and the price of energy only going higher and then probably the price of batteries coming down as well, that it's going to be more mainstream, just like how every house has an air conditioner now almost, whereas it used to not be the case, yep. So I think in the future you'll walk by every house and there'll be their battery on the side there. I mean, it just makes sense, right, like who wants to lose power. Yeah, like who wants that. You know you can't go to work, or if you work from home, you can't work. You can't go on the internet, you can't access. You know yep online, which most of our lives are online these days.
Speaker 4:so well, certainly there is a huge component of individuals who are all working from home now, and this is one way to ensure that they can continue to work from home, by making sure that they have a constant source of energy that can be, you know, dependent on Well, nobody wants to be that guy that's like wants to work from home.
Speaker 5:but then your power goes out all the time and then you know your boss is just rolling his eyes.
Speaker 4:Yes, exactly. Yeah, all right, chris. Well, I think you've been very informative and I appreciate all the information. So, essentially, what you're looking up for a solar panel system is determine the size of necessary for the facility that you want to comply with set up. And then you're looking at panels, hardware to install it, the converter systems and the storage system to put it into your house and all the compliance necessary, whether it's contributing back to the grid or if it's a rural off-grid situation. Have I got that pretty much correct?
Speaker 5:Absolutely.
Speaker 4:Good, all right. So, chris, how can people get in touch with you to find out more details or find out about the programs and the options that your company provides for people out there?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so our team can help anybody who's interested in finding out what rebates or incentives are available locally where they live, because it is different from one province to the next or even from one city to the next sometimes.
Speaker 5:So you can go over to Zollerca and it's X-O-L-L-A-R dot C-A and our team. You'll just fill out the form there asking for a quote and then our team will get in touch with you and kind of review your situation and see, you know, are you living off grid? Are you grid tied, you know? Are you living in a small bungalow or are you in a mansion? Like, are you running, you know? Are you mining crypto in there? Like, are you running, you know, are you mining crypto in there and you need a ton of energy? Or are you kind of? You know, an older couple that doesn't use too much power and they're prepared to help with all of those types of questions and figure out the right system for you. And then, ultimately, we manage the whole project from start to finish white glove service and then we install it for you and set you up and running with solar energy.
Speaker 4:Very good, and this is all across Canada, right.
Speaker 5:Absolutely Aside from Quebec.
Speaker 4:Okay, so everywhere in Canada except Quebec.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Very good sir. Well, Chris, thank you very much for taking the time. I think it's been very informative and I think a lot of our listeners will be very happy that we've been able to provide some more answers to the questions that we got asked, and that case was about being off grid and solar and things along those lines. So thanks very much, Chris.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. Another thing we'll have to talk next time about is the RV systems. Those are popular too at the campers.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay, all right Sounds good, chris Yep.
Speaker 5:Thanks for having me. Okay. Bye, right, sounds good, chris Yep. Thanks for having me. Okay, bye for now.
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