Near-term viability of solar heat applications for the federal sector

Conference · Sun Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:5922847

Williams, T A

Solar thermal technologies are capable of providing heat across a wide range of temperatures, making them potentially attractive for meeting energy requirements for industrial process heat applications and institutional heating. The energy savings that could be realized by solar thermal heat are quite large, potentially several quads annually. Although technologies for delivering heat at temperatures above 100{degrees}C currently exit within industry, only a fairly small number of commercial systems have been installed to date. The objective of this paper is to investigate and discuss the prospects for near-term solar heat sales to federal facilities as a mechanism for providing an early market niche to the aid the widespread development and implementation of the technology. The specific technical focus is on mid-temperature (100{degrees}--350{degrees}C) heat demands that could be met with parabolic trough systems. Federal facilities have several relative to private industry that may make them attractive for solar heat applications relative to other sectors. Key features are specific policy mandates for conserving energy, a long-term planning horizon with well-defined decision criteria, and prescribed economic return criteria for conservation and solar investments that are generally less stringent than the investment criteria used by private industry. Federal facilities also have specific difficulties in the sale of solar heat technologies and strategies to mitigate these difficulties will be important. For the baseline scenario developed in this paper, the solar heat application was economically competitive with heat provided by natural gas. The system levelized energy cost was $5.9/MBtu for the solar heat case, compared to $6.8/MBtu for the life-cycle fuel cost of a natural gas case. A third-party ownership would also be attractive to federal users, since it would guarantee energy savings and would not need initial federal funds. 11 refs., 2 figs., 3 tabs.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-83CH10093
• OSTI ID: 5922847
• Report Number(s): NREL/TP-250-4602; CONF-920436--10; ON: DE92001184
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
140900* -- Solar Thermal Utilization
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
299000 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Unconventional Sources & Power Generation
BUILDINGS
CONCENTRATING COLLECTORS
CONVERSION
ECONOMICS
ENERGY CONSERVATION
ENERGY CONVERSION
EQUIPMENT
FEASIBILITY STUDIES
FEDERAL BUILDINGS
FORECASTING
INDUSTRY
PARABOLIC COLLECTORS
PARABOLIC TROUGH COLLECTORS
PUBLIC BUILDINGS
SOLAR COLLECTORS
SOLAR ENERGY CONVERSION
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
SOLAR INDUSTRY
SOLAR THERMAL CONVERSION
TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT