Monday, October 27, 2008

Solar Wall plus PV is revolutionary!

"Conserval Engineering originated the concept of combining PV with SolarWall. The goal was to address some of the problems inherent with conventional photovoltaics, and to develop a solution that would further enhance PV as a viable renewable energy solution. Two problems that make PV unattractive are the long payback periods and the low efficiencies. These occur because of the excess heat accumulation on the PV panels. For every 1ÂșC rise in PV panel temperature, there is a 0.4% - 0.5% drop in the electrical output efficiency, and this is why the concept of “PV cooling” has become so important.


The SolarWall PV thermal (PV/T) co-generation system was recently tested at the Canadian National Solar Test Facility in conjunction with the International Energy Agency Task 35. The results documented that adding a solar thermal component to a PV array boosts the total solar efficiency to over 50%, compared with 10 to 15% efficiency for most PV modules alone. The heat from the PV panels, captured by the SolarWall perforated absorber, was documented to be three times more than the electrical energy generated from the PV modules. This means that by utilizing the excess heat, it becomes possible to realize a solar capture efficiency improvements of up to 200-300%."

http://solarwall.com/en/products/solarwall-pvt.php

Just think of the amazing energy savings for the military! And it gets better when you think of advanced thin film and SUNGRI's technologies. Lets look at Fort Drum whic is currently the largest deployer of SolarWall.



"one of the largest and most extensive solar
air heating projects in the world has now
been completed for the United States Military
base at Fort Drum, in upstate New York.
The project is extremely significant in terms
of the sheer magnitude of energy and CO2
savings, and it shows the tremendous potential
for solar thermal when it is deployed on a
large scale.
In the fall of 2005, the Army Corp of
Engineers at the base commissioned a multimillion
dollar retrofit program to upgrade 27
of their vehicle maintenance buildings.
Conserval Engineering and Conserval
Systems worked closely with the military
base over the two year duration of the
contract in the design and installation of the
SolarWall systems. SolarWall technology
had previously been used at eight other U.S.
military bases.
This project was one of the reasons why the
U.S. Corp of Engineers, in 2006, identified
the SolarWall® system as one of two costeffective
technologies ideally suited for
military buildings, such as vehicle
maintenance garages.
The world’s largest collection of solar air heated buildings is located at Fort Drum, New York.
Project Summary
• 50 SolarWall® heating systems installed on
27 buildings
• 110,000 square feet (10,220 m2) of
SolarWall® panels
• 300,000 cfm (510,000 m3/h) of air heated
with 99 fans
• Projected fuels savings of 44,000 million
BTU/h (46,000 GJ) per year
• 4 MW of thermal energy capacity
• 2,000 tons of CO2 displacement per year"

http://solarwall.com/media/download_gallery/FortDrum-SolarWall.pdf

Now combine nano-solar thin film photovolaics, which have efficiencies of around 15% with all the solar wall installations and you have an energy output of around 12 MW!

Then combine Solar Duct (which would be placed on the roof) with Sungri's solar cells which have efficiencies of about 37%, and you have even more energy produced.


I sent an email to Fort Drum and intend to send more!