Georgia Power Company Corporate Headquarters solar system. Final construction status report
The Corporate Headquarters Office Building of Georgia Power Company (GPC) has one of the largest and most successful commercial applications of solar energy for building heating, cooling, and domestic hot water in the US. A performance type specification was issued with a guaranteed performance in Btu/yr. A one year operation, maintenance, and monitoring effort was conducted. The 24-story high-rise and the three story low-rise consumes about 50,000 Btu/ft/sup 2/-yr. The solar system will provide about 18.6% of the heating and cooling loads. There are (23,712) square feet of parabolic trough collectors which collect a maximum of 3.4 million Btu/hr. Past experience and advice from previous DOE projects lead to the use of a treated water recirculation freeze protection system in lieu of an ethylene glycol system. The project uses a unique version of the Delavan tracker in order to perform properly in the southeastern climate. Conclusions reached during this project include: (1) detailed specifications for integration into building mechanical systems are required; (2) reaction time of the computer control system can inhibit the collector tracking system operation; (3) extreme care must be used in a large system design to insure balanced flow; (4) the Delavan tracker can be altered to operate more efficiently; (5) the GPC solar system is providing slightly less than the predicted amount of energy, due to apparently higher than expected parasitic losses; (6) total available direct radiation appears to be less than predicted for summer months; (7) the electrical hardware at the collector motors requires more maintenance than expected because of the harsh environment at their locations; and (8) the control logic has to be altered to deal with hot hazy days.
- Research Organization:
- Heery Energy Consultants, Inc., Atlanta, GA (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC03-78CS35192
- OSTI ID:
- 5701199
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/CS/35192-T1; ON: DE85014674
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
140300 -- Solar Energy-- Economic
Industrial
& Business Aspects
140901* -- Solar Thermal Utilization-- Space Heating & Cooling
140907 -- Solar Thermal Utilization-- Water Heating
BUILDINGS
COMPUTERIZED CONTROL SYSTEMS
CONCENTRATING COLLECTORS
CONSTRUCTION
CONTROL SYSTEMS
COST
DATA ACQUISITION
DESIGN
ENERGY SYSTEMS
EQUIPMENT
EVALUATION
FREEZE PROTECTION
HEATING
HEATING SYSTEMS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
MONITORING
OFFICE BUILDINGS
OPERATION
ORIENTATION
PARABOLIC COLLECTORS
PARABOLIC TROUGH COLLECTORS
PERFORMANCE
PYRHELIOMETERS
SOLAR COLLECTORS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
SOLAR HEATING
SOLAR HEATING SYSTEMS
SOLAR TRACKING
SOLAR WATER HEATING
TELESCOPES
TESTING
VALIDATION
WATER HEATING