New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
March 7, 2011 | Length: 00:02:38
Sonoma Wine Company in Graton, Calif., recently installed a unique solar array that generates both electricity and hot water in one system. SmartPlanet visits the wine producer's operations and sees the new hybrid unit developed by Vinod Khosla backed start-up, Cogenra.
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RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
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home made pv and solar water heaters
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
These are all great ideas, but they're not "new". It's only the methods, subisdies, and marketing that are "new".
Years ago, my dad's house, and many others, had rainwater collecting systems. Many rural homes got water and/or electricity from a windmill, and many still do.
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
Maybe they should work with YouTube or something more user friendly.
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
Here's the link
http://www.youtube.com/user/SmartPlanetCBS
Thanks for watching,
SmartPlanet Video Team
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
giving up and buying a vacuum-insulated heat-pipe solar
hot water system.
Dr Ferren MacIntyre
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
http://www.zenithsolar.com/
I believe zenith's system is even more efficient, as it uses a pv cell
that is better then the regular Silicon cells.
I am not an expert though, just my 2 cents.
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
* Design: optimized for customer?s facility and operations needs.
* Construction: eliminating the need to make capital investments or manage permitting and contractors.
* Operations & Maintenance: providing all necessary maintenance, upgrades, repairs and insurance.
* Incentives and Tax Credit Management: as system owner, Cogenra manages all filings for solar tax credits and government incentives.
* Metering and Billing: Cogenra meters solar output and bills monthly for the energy produced.
* REC Management: Cogenra manages the distribution of Renewable Energy Credits as agreed upon with customer.
All of this makes a great deal of sense to business under current conditions. Maintenance of these systems is not something most maintenance people know anything about at this time, and facilities maintenance is often hired work for tax reasons.
It also puts them in competition directly with the local utilities (in Wisconsin the power company has to buy power from consumers at retail, you can sell any excess power under those conditions.
Power & heat costs I write off as expenses, but a system has to be amortized and the actual lifetime cost is unknowable.
Be nice to see this model in the consumer market, as system maintenance is a worry.
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
unit's though for generic world use, and OC a micro universal
12vDC power plug kit to allow you to add more units as you wish, i
could find a place for two or 3 of those tank's and mirrors in the
back yard, although simple auto sun tracking mechanical units
driven by small DC motor's and fitted with 11b/g/n wireless CPU
SOC are still a pipe dream in end user costs today, shame.
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
it and spread the word as they dont seem interested in providing a a
Direct URL link to the actual video so you can download it and run it
locally in VLC or whatever, which i always find rather odd with all the
online PR video clips , just provide a direct download link and make
everyone happier
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
It was interesting to see the different technologies combined. Solar cells work at higher efficiencies with concentrated solar energy but that creates tremendous heat that must be removed, or the cells degrade quickly. Using a closed-loop system to do this and provide potable hot water is an ideal solution. It limits its usefulness to companies that can use all this hot water. I wonder if a Sterling-cycle engine could be added to produce electricity, too.
RE: New spin on solar: Hot water and electricity in one system
home made pv and solar water heaters
Transcript
Music
>> Sumi Das: In the Northern California Wine Country, sits Sonoma Wine Company, a manufacturing plant that crushes, ferments, and bottles more than 3 million cases of wine a year for the industry. And as you might imagine, with that much wine being produced, its energy consumption is high, from the hot water that cleans the barrel tanks --
>> The barrels come through here and there's a three stage washing system. We use a lot of water here.
>> -- to the electricity that powers the bottling line.
>> We have the pre-bottling wines there at varying speeds, and they bottle anywhere from 100 to 160, 170 bottles per minute.
>> So last year, the company decided to green their operations, their plan, to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and also cut down on their energy bill. Working with Silicon Valley's startup Cogenra they installed a unique solar system that generates both electricity and hot water at the same time. The hybrid unit or cogeneration, as it's sometimes called, captures and converts more energy than a traditional solar array by bringing together two technologies, solar panels and solar water heaters into one system. Here's how it works.
>> You see, the mirrors here are basically shaped in such fashion to drive up the sun from both sides on to this small area here, the photovoltaic cells. So that is a concentrating effect that's driving the sun up, and, therefore, capturing a greater amount of energy and a large surface area. We then take a PV, which is a standard photovoltaic, we use that to generate the electricity.
>> While the unit is generating electricity, the solar cells are also pulling off the waste heat and turning it into hot water.
>> So the water that goes through the array is being heated, that's in a separate closed loop system. There's a heat exchanger that pulls the heat off from that water and feeds it into these tanks.
>> Since installing the hybrid solar system, Sonoma Wine Company has reaped environmental benefits but they've also improved their bottom line.
>> It's reducing our natural gas heat needs by 45 percent. That's an equivalent savings in the amount of money we spend per year on energy. That's really significant.
>> Sumi Das: And it's allowing the company to expand their operations while keeping their energy needs content. For Smart Planet, I'm Sumi Das.
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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====