Community Solar Power
A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F).
The Drake Landing Solar Community collects solar energy in a heat storage fluid through an array of solar panels on the roof of each home and covering all of the garages at the back of each home. The heated fluid is transferred to a neighborhood energy center, and then into the ground beneath an insulated layer, where the heat is stored in the earth.
Combined together, the 52 home community is able to collect and store enough energy from the sun during the summer that the ground storage temperatures reach 80 degrees C (176 F). This heat is sufficiently insulated beneath the ground that it can be drawn from throughout the winter to provide heat and hot water.
The homes in the community are moderately sized, ranging from 1,492 to 1,664 square feet, and are insulated to a level 30% higher than the average home in Canada in order to keep the energy needs low enough to work with the system. The homes are also closely located to one another. This provides a more walkable neighborhood, as well as reducing the lengths that the fluid for the solar heating system needs to travel.
Entire Neighborhood Has Shared Solar Heating
The system works in part due to the scale of the project utilizing the combined capacity of the entire community. A similar system scaled down to a single family home version would not work as efficiently simply because too much heat would be lost. But the scale of a system for 52 households makes this a feasible project.
While the technology is similar to a ground source heat pump, which relies on a relatively stable, constant temperature of the ground, the Drake Landing Community is actually storing heat throughout the summer and then relying on that banked heat during the winter.
Solar heating is a more exciting prospect than solar generation of electricity because heating is a much larger percentage of a home’s total energy use (60% for space heating, 20% for water heating, and 20% for appliances, lights, and other electrical loads).
Related articles on Green Building Elements:
Geothermal Energy and Ground Source Heat Pumps
GreenBuildingTalk: Solar Hot Water and Heating — Is it Right for You?
Traditional Neighborhood Development and LEED Go Hand in Hand
Green Communities, Part 1: New Urbanism
images via: DLSC
Wow, solar energy is SO cool…
http://www.FireMe.to/udi
t’s splld “stry” y trd.
If you want to use the degrees symbol (°) hold down the ALT key and type in 248 (or 0176) on the keypad.
Another way is to go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map. Simply select the degrees symbol and copy and paste it. There are also lots of other useful symbols you can find there.
Finally, if you are writing HTML directly, you can type in ° (not sure if that will show up in the comments though) where you want the degrees symbol, and it will show up when you browse to the page.
And costs, recovery time?
What a great idea. Why don’t builders do this in all new developments? The government should do what it can to encourage this. We’d all be so much better off.
[...] This Entire Neighborhood has Shared Solar Heating A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for its 52 homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F). Community Solar Power : Green Building Elements [...]
I haven’t yet found any information about the payback period for this neighborhood. Since it is a pilot project, it’s likely to have greater startup costs, versus what future communities trying a system such as this might face.
Way to go Canada!!! Behold the rest of you people the way of the future.
An inexpensive similar method can provide a small portion of the winter heat. We have a set of seven fans connected to a thermostat to blow summer air through the basement and up into the house. It cuts cooling costs (especially the first year). And after five years, the soil temperature has risen enough that we only turn on basement heat when it gets cold outside. This has made a noticable dent in fuel usage. Wing insulation outside the house is being added as time is available to reduce heat escape.
Check this out: Most Cost Efficient Solar System in the World