Monitoring of the performance of a solar-heated-and-cooled apartment building. Final report

Technical Report · Sat Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1980

OSTI ID:6274008

Vliet, G C; Srubar, R L

A 12-unit student apartment building was retrofitted for solar heating and cooling and hot water. The retrofit of the all-electric building resulted in a system consisting of an array of 1280 square feet of concentrating tracking collectors, a 5000-gallon hot water storage vessel, a 500-gallon chilled water storage vesel, a 25-ton absorption chiller, and a two-pipe hydronic air conditioning system. The solar air conditioning equipment is installed in parallel with the existing conventional electric heating and cooling system, and the solar domestic water heating serves as preheat to the existing electric water heaters. The system was fully instrumented for temperature, flow rate, electrical power, and meteorological measurements. The data indicate that 11.2% of the cooling load was met by solar and 8.2% of the total load (cooling plus hot water) was met by solar. The performance of the collector array was determined to be approximately 60% of that suggested by the manufacturer. Steady-state chiller operation exhibited a C.O.P. very close to the manufacturer's specified performance values, but the time-averaged chiller C.O.P. is degraded due to cycling. The composite solar fraction (8.2%) is less than solar cooling only (11.2%) because there was no solar domestic hot water delivery during this monitoring period. The evaluation of system performance for the cooling season indicates a lower performance than expected. However, system performance in the cooling mode can be improved by better adjustment of the thermostats and controls. Continued data collection and analysis should be performed, to improve system operations, assess performance limits, and compare results with design projections.

• Research Organization: Texas Univ., Austin (USA). Center for Energy Studies
• DOE Contract Number: AS01-78CS35235
• OSTI ID: 6274008
• Report Number(s): TENRAC/EDF-050; ON: DE83011815
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
140901* -- Solar Thermal Utilization-- Space Heating & Cooling
AIR CONDITIONERS
AIR CONDITIONING
APARTMENT BUILDINGS
APPLIANCES
BUILDINGS
CONCENTRATING COLLECTORS
COOLING LOAD
ENERGY SYSTEMS
EQUIPMENT
HEATERS
HEATING
HEATING SYSTEMS
PERFORMANCE
RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS
RETROFITTING
SOLAR AIR CONDITIONERS
SOLAR AIR CONDITIONING
SOLAR COLLECTORS
SOLAR COOLING SYSTEMS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
SOLAR FRACTION
SOLAR HEATING
SOLAR HEATING SYSTEMS
SOLAR SPACE HEATING
SOLAR WATER HEATERS
SOLAR WATER HEATING
SPACE HEATING
WATER HEATERS
WATER HEATING