The Ravina Project is a privately run research project, dedicated to educating people about the impacts of home ownership on
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
.
Overview
Susan and Gordon Fraser, a retired couple who converted their 1920s-era
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
home into an engineering science experiment starting on November 1, 2006. The home features
solar panels
A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a phot ...
which in turn charge batteries to supply energy to the house when
grid connectivity is disrupted, as well as a bi-directional interface to the power grid, permitting the home to both draw from and supply to the grid. The home also features a variety of applications for insulating walls, windows, and doors.
In 2008 the
solar array
A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and co ...
was modified using an extendable arm made for satellite TVs in order to tilt the solar panels to maximize energy generation. The array can be viewed at any time, via a camera mounted on a neighbour's roof, and the array can be re-positioned via a computer in the home. The Ravina Project publishes data frequently to indicate how well a particular improvement contributes to heating efficiency or power generation, and regularly produces research papers to explain the impact of particular endeavours. For example, one recent paper reveals the Ravina Project achieved a 31.9% cost savings on heating bills over the baseline, measured in 2005. In addition to cost-savings, the Ravina Project is able to supply electricity to neighbouring homes, as 60% of the energy collected from the home's solar panels gets fed back to the grid. Susan and Gordon Fraser present on their research often. At the Ontario Good Road Association conference in February 2017, Gordon Fraser reported that laying panels flat during the winter was the orientation that produced most effective electricity generation.
[OGRA Conference, Day 2, AM (visited May 21, 2019), available at 1h:29m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSKc-PUgSTs]
References
External links
The Ravina Project{coord missing, Ontario
Renewable energy
Buildings and structures in Toronto