Cameron Douglas

My name is Cameron Douglas and I live in Peterborough, Ontario with my wife Yvonne and two young children Jake & Kaia. I teach geography at Peterborough Collegiate.

I have been enthralled with renewable energy for years, and it factors heavily in my teaching. But over the past few years, climate change has really weighed heavily on my mind. We live in an old downtown home, and have worked to reduce our energy needs. Through wall and attic insulating, intensive draft sealing and a tankless water heater, I’ve reduced our natural gas demand by almost 50%. Through lightbulb changing and sensors, new fridge, power bars to reduce phantom load, and reduced furnace fan loads, our average daily electricity use has gone from 16 kWhrs/day to less than 11. We don’t have a dryer – we’ve always hung our laundry. Just this fall I installed an EPA (carbon neutral?) wood stove and simple ducting system to spread the heat, and this appears to be doing about 75% of our heating and will further reduce our electricity to about 8 kWhrs/day. The firewood is scavenged from around the city (my kids say “Daddy, you REALLY like wood, don’t you?”)

Yvonne and I have been thinking about a PV system for some time, and this year finally took the plunge after learning about Ontario’s Standard Offer Program. Sean Flanagan prepared a fantastic plan to work a 5.6 kW system onto our 2.5 story roof that has two skylights. Sean and I installed it with the help of his intern Flora during the last week of August 2008 (see story “ Largest Array in Ontario installed ...” on the home page) and my kids threw the switches to send our 1st power to the grid on October 28th . Averaged out over the year we should be producing 22 kWhrs/day – just more than twice our consumption. To further offset our carbon footprint, we switched to Bullfrog power last year. The project was undertaken mostly as a demonstration project – we wanted people to note it and ask questions about it. We also wanted to push Peterborough Utilities a bit to open up to this new way of generation. And we wanted to stimulate the local renewables business. It really IS possible, and will pay itself back in 14-18 yrs, including financing charges.

This work will never really be done. There is some room left on the roof for possible solar thermal collectors. And I’m mulling over designs for a carbon neutral 3 to 4 season greenhouse to produce our food. It is great to have Sean around to bounce ideas back and forth. If he hasn’t already done it himself, he has certainly thought about it or knows somebody who HAS done it! These are all serious issues, but few have a better sense of humour than Sean.

If you would like to be featured as an Eco-Individual on our website, please contact us and let us know what you are doing in terms of energy conservation or environmental stewardship.