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.
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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
What affects does heating the ground do to the earth’s temp over time? Are we creating another problem by doing this vs. using “regular” solar power?
Interesting setup.
It looks expensive.
One obvious difference between this and regular geothermal heating would be that regular geothermal will provide you with cooling all summer as well.
[...] Community Solar Power : Green Building Elements 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. [...]
With the price of Gas at over $4.00 a gal. sure the heating oil is not far off that, It makes great sense to assume that Solar energy will be appealing to many people. I predict that many homes and buildings throu out the country will be decorated with solar collectors of various types. advise for design engineers, contractors, builders and developers ” have a head start and establish yourself in this huge upcoming market.
[...] Via Green Building Elements [...]
a solar powered community in India:
http://www.indianofficer.com/forums/chit-chat/5610-rabi-rashmi-abasan-india-s-first-solar-powered-colony.html
Individuality is always lost in this type of community though. For most, it has never been an issue of paying for more square footage. Recently, that has been an issue due to the rising costs of energy. People will turn to smaller homes that are well designed to suit them specifically. It may sound like a good idea to share the expenses of putting in this type of shared solar system, but when it needs to be repaired or replaced, each household must buck up the extra money to fund the project, regardless of whether or not they planned for such an expense. In this sense, this community has some fee structures like those of condominiums. People who purchase single family homes in the United States do so for the liberty and flexibility of being able to make choices for themselves. However, the advantages of this system are credited to its scale: the more hot water stored deep in the bore hole, the better it maintains its temperature. Why not take it a step further and share walls and floors with other ‘homes’, aka apartments. This step takes the actual living spaces and makes them more energy efficient, reducing the demand on the mechanical systems, thus saving energy.
The issue at hand is that Americans do not prefer apartments to single family homes. Apparently, neither do the folks from this community in Alberta. A dwelling must be reliant on the sources that are available. Years ago, farm houses, and other detached residential structures were designed specifically to work with the amounts and types of resources that were readily available (firewood, peat, etc.). In the same light, years ago, people living in high density (comparable to our suburbs of today), lived in flats, apartments, or other multi-family structures simply because resources were more scarce in that location. Shared walls, floors and heat made it possible.
Great stuff! The individuality of each home is lost in the repetition of each unit, however.
[...] the most part. True, there are several buildings that do utilize this technique and even at least one entire community that is collectively storing heat in the ground, but by and large, most people are not aware of the [...]