Alternate energy is in the air these days

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have back to back solar hydronic themes going on, in P&M and Contractors magazines.

I know a lot of wallies are thinking solar radiant and DHW, as they should be. This article has some up to the minute design ideas.

Thanks to these fine columnists for thinking outside the barrel. (of crude :)

http://www.pmmag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,2379,132547,00.html

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Mike Kraft_2

Put This On Your Roof...............

and smoke it.An architect that I have been doing some work for over the years turned me onto this.I don't know much about it haven't had anytime to "dealve".Been mostly working.

cheese

http://www.omsolar.net/

Christian Egli

Crude!

But fossil fuels are just that: fossilized solar energy. Solar energy that was canned a long time ago for our convenience from all the trees that captured the sun rays through their leafs. The photosynthesized wood then went on to becoming peat, then oil, gas and coal. Today, we're tapping into old stockpiles of the stuff, but, no doubt, in a million years our descendants will tap into fossil fuels that are left from today's dead trees and compost and ... our garbage dumps.

So, stoking your boiler, amounts to the same thing as relying on solar panels, it's just that the sun energy was canned for a while. The easy solar energy for winter use comes from our fossil fuels, doesn't it?

But in the summer, when the sun rays are at their freshest, what sense does it make not to use any besides what we are canning for the future with our trees? It's just like a vegetable garden in the summer, you can't eat enough to keep up.

That's the problem. Nobody needs central heating in the summer. But what we do need is steam, ahhh, for absorption cooling.

Solar heating in the winter is ill suited for sky-high efficiencies, but, think of it, solar cooling in the summer can't be better, the hotter it gets, the more cooling power you have!

For the winter, using canned energy will remain our only salvation. Think of wood, gas, coal, and oil, there are a lot of possibilities, and all things considered, there are very competitive and affordable solutions, unless we find a real cheap way of getting more sun in the winter and at night.

Isn't that why we go to Florida and Las Vegas?

Think about steam heat and absorption cooling, solar cooling.

Christian Egli

Unknown

it's called evaporative cooling

make a pond on your roof, let the sun evaporate it, poof, free cooling.

I hope your comment on using fossil fuels was facetious! Yes, it all comes from the sun. That certainly does not mean the impact is the same between using a solar panel and burning oil. First, you could consider that this stuff became what it became for a reason, and turning around to re-release all that carbon in short order may very well cause problems. Secondly, do what you will, spewing pollution into the air isn't the healthiest choice available. Third, all the canned energy we're dealing with puts us at risk and leaves us at the mercy of unstable world politics. And this one is gonna be huge in the next few years. Check out what china and india are up to these days as far as consumption, then check out what we've got left for excess capacity. it's not a pretty pricture.

With all that in mind, if you've got or can make the budget, solar may not 100% ideal, but it can be more than economical, and it's only getting moreso every year. Passive solar especially heats many a home quite well the majority of the time in many climates, including up here in the northeast where my co-designer's heat doesn't even come on until 9-10 at night most days.

Carl PE

you are correct!

wallies are thinking about solar some wallies have got their systems about half done.

how's your alternate energy show going?

carl

Dale Pickard

Conservation

The economics of energy conservation trump those of energy production investments every time. With renewable energy, especially solar, investments in energy conservation are necessary before any reasonable investment in energy production is even possible.

We won't be heating any log homes with a mechanical solar system connected to a staple up radiant floor. That's for fools.

For many good reasons, mechanical solar space heating itself, even on well insulated buildings is not really a good idea and is generally not competitive with other available conservation investments, like a very efficient heating system. (The same reasoning makes a very good economic case for widespread use of solar domestic water heating.)

The wetheads need to be thinking about squeezing the economic performance out of their conventional fossil fired systems before recommending any investments in alternative energy production.

Dale

Steamhead

I have read somewhere

that it's possible to generate steam using solar energy. One of these days I'll find that old article and post it.

Dale Pickard

F-chart

Siggy mentioned F-Chart in his article on solar. I had done several F-chart runs for a home built in Aspen CO. I've attached several charts in pdf form that illustrate the performance of various solar systems on that house. The pdf's seem to download fine.

The climatic data, including solar radiation used was for Eagle CO. Simply said, F-Chart allows the correlation of the climate with the heating load to calculate how much solar energy can be delivered to the load. There is also an entire economic analysis available...I'm only including the thermal information. The economics is a whole 'nother ball game. One can see how the economics are derived from this annual performance information.l

This system was ably installed by Todd Chestnut of All Mountain Plumbing of Carbondale CO. The home, designed by A4 Architects of Carbondale is a good example of a tight, energy conservative home that incorporates solar well into the architecture. This home also recieved a substantial grid tied solar photovoltaic system.

Of the charts,
Solar x Mo is the solar energy that the collector array makes available to the load.

Sys is the data that describes the basic variable input data for the solar system and the heat loss characteristic of the house. (UA). The performance information used is based on a typical high performance flat plate collector such as the Heliodyne Gobi or the SunEarth Imperial.

Heat x Mo shows how the heating load on the house changes with the weather

F x UA shows how the Annual Solar Heating Fraction (F) varies with the heat loss characteristic of the house (UA)

F x Panels shows how the Annual Solar Heating Fraction (F) varies with array size...ie number of solar collectors. This includes DHW loads.

Gal / ft2 shows how performance varies with tank sizes larger than 2 gal/ft2 collector.

F x Mo shows how the Annual Solar Heating Fraction (F) us distributed monthly.

Drainback shows the mechanical system schematic.

There is a lot of information in these charts.

Dale Pickard
Radiant Engineering Inc.
501 E. Peach
Bozeman MT 59715
406.587.6036 ext 102
pick@radiantengineering.com

Brian (Tankless)

At Google,

type in "Steam from Solar".

Lot's of info out there.

Swampy.

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Solar to steam to generators

http://www.solel.com/products/pgeneration/ls2/kramerjunction/

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