IntellaMaxx Solar Controllers 9.17.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS INTELLAMAXX SOLAR CONTROLLERS Date: 9/17/2010 Folks, welcome to the SunMaxx series Solar Hot Water webinars. Today we’re talking about IntellaMaxx controllers. I’d like to speak with you about the different functionality of the controllers, programming and troubleshooting, as well as installation techniques. And as always, if you have any questions, I encourage you to type it in the chat box and we can try to address it right away. Ok, now SunMaxx offers two basic types of IntellaMaxx controllers and the functionality between these two basically covers just about everything we have been trying to do. Over the last few years, we’ve looked around and tried to design controllers and functions that don’t offer too much but at least the minimum capabilities. So, we’ve broken up into two classes: the domestic hot water and the combination system. A combisystem is one that does heat and hot water, okay. The IntellaMaxx-DHW processes two relays. Those two relays can be used for anything from valves to pumps or other switches for that matter. Both controllers, the IntellaMaxx and CombiPlus, take in 110 volts. They have an internal transformer so we can run a low voltage actuator if we need to off of that or we can run a high voltage pump higher than 110. So, there are four sensors on the basic hot water system. Those four sensors can be used for the collectors for the top of the storage tank, for the bottom of the storage tank, for a second storage tank altogether. You can also use one of the relays as a second recirculation pump. It gives you the opportunity to begin dumping heat from the solar tank into an existing tank when the conditions are right and it optimizes the collector’s efficiency. With the IntellaMaxx CombiPlus controller there are seven relays. Now this gives you a really broad range of types of capabilities. We can run multiple pumps using the pump logic, or we can run multiple valves, which is most optimally with a combination of both valve and pump logic. This has twelve sensors. Now, although you have twelve sensors, there are only seven of those that are going to be able to operate as a differential. And you have monitoring sensors that you will be able to plug in a VBus or data logging capability so that you can find what the temperature gain is across the collector. You can look at temperature losses from one section of run to the other. You can also input radiation. You can input flow meter data to measure the total of BTU output. CombiPlus will allow you to have up to five different storage tanks. Those five storage tanks give you the opportunity to regulate your storage capacity relative to production. And as many of you know, from one day to the next production may be cut in half or cut in a third. So, you try to size up your storage tank relative to the production. With production changes all the time, what we’re finding is that some of these systems that use multiple tank strategies are getting a higher efficiency therefore a higher output over the course of the season. So CombiPlus allows you to do that relatively easy. The DHWB Plus, domestic hot water basic plus, like I said it has two relays. There’s a thermostat function which means that one relay can be based on the differential which will turn on the pump based on the differential between the collector and the storage tank. The other rely can be used as a thermostatic function where we can execute a function based on a set temperature, not a differential but a set temperature, okay. We can install up to four PT1000 sensors. There are two relays, both are speed controlled. There’s a variable speed control associated with those relays. There is also a drainback option. The drainback option allows you to send 110 volts to a second pump to boost the head in that line until you get a siphoning effect at which point the second pump would shut off. That’s the booster function. Another drainback function is that if the collector temperature exceeds a set temperature that you can program in at 250 degrees, the pump will not kick on if the collectors are at that temperature, that prevents the flash steaming and basically little micro explosions of water losing pressure and reaching its boiling point instantaneously. Okay, so these controllers have that functionality and also have an anti-freeze function that is if you choose to use just water. It allows you the ability to begin transferring heat from your storage tank into the solar loop to prevent freezing and it can operate intermittently depending on the temperature of the line. You can also plug in the VBus. The VBus gives you the data logging capability and you can do some energy metering with a VT meter and flow meter. We can also program the system through RESOL and design this to transfer data through a service center that can be downloadable remotely. Okay, so there’s a lot of functionality built into this simple controller. Simple is a relative word in many areas and differential controllers such as the SunMaxx and IntellaMaxx controller is no exception. Its simple controllers, relative to the more complicated CombiPlus. This is our basic inexpensive controller that is suitable for 75 to 80 percent of the systems out there. Okay, some technical data, we won’t go over too much of it but just so you have it in reference. There are semiconductor relays, there’s three push buttons that mount on the wall, also can mount into a patch panel, and has four PT1000 sensors, and its 110-115 volt semiconductor relay. Just to remind you what I’ve just gone over, the number of collectors that are capable, and just to point out that it is not really collectors but rather the number of arrays, this is the number of return pipes that it can have. Each array in parallel would have its own return pipe with a separate pump and this gives you the ability to have two separate arrays. For example, if you had one array facing east and one array facing west, this control would allow you to operate two separate pumps independently of one another depending on the temperature. Now the CombiPlus controller has seven basic systems that are possible with this. And as I mentioned before, there are 13 sensor inputs, there’s a heating circuit and the control of three additional weather-compensated heating circuits by additional modules. So, this can be designed as a full house heating controller that you can monitor remotely using the VBus and it’s very easy to understand. This is a home heating controller that does solar in conjunction with a boiler, or furnace, a wood boiler, steam boiler, propane, that does not matter. It can control or tie into the thermostats of your house. The CombiPlus controller uses 100-240 volts. There’s standard push buttons on the front and twelve sensor inputs. There is a remote control input where you can have a remote temperature sensor, and it controls or you can add to it a sensor. There are thirteen relays, twelve of them are semiconductors, one is a free relay. You can tie into different boilers, outdoor ambient resets, flow control regulators. Some more of the technical information, what I’d like to do is forward to you the manual if you’d like to have it or you can go to sunmaxxsolar.com where you can download a copy of this manual. By downloading a copy and getting an idea of what systems you’d like to integrate there are different arrays. All you really need to do is click on the array that you think is most suitable and we can help you design it from there. By choosing the controller first, then all the system components will fall into place. A lot of guys will buy the system and then try to decide what kind of controller they want. We’ve already done a lot of that for you. We’ve offered two that cover every possible system that we’ve installed so far. The IntellaMaxx CombiPlus is going to give you a lot of versatility, slightly more expensive cost up front, but in the end it’s going to be able to do your heating system, you can tie a boiler and a furnace and a fan into this controller so it will take care of your heating system for you. Some of the accessories you can buy, one is the VBus also a data logger, and a VBus monitoring system. You can also get a system alarm so that if anything goes wrong with the perimeters that you’ve predetermined such as temperature or pressure then the alarm will be sent. It will either be activated directly or a message will be sent to your computer or flow switch. A flow switch is a very important device. In order to turn on the circulation between the tank and the external exchanger when there’s presence of domestic hot water flow. A flow switch allows you to bring the exchanger out of the tank, mount it externally, and when somebody pours hot water through the system that flow switch is automatically going to trigger a circulator to turn on to exchange heat from the tank into the exchanger, from the exchanger into the cold water supply. Another accessory is the VBus touch for iPhones. The iPhone gives you a pretty unique ability. As long as you have wireless capability, from your home you can log into your home’s network and open up the screen that shows the collector temperature. So as you see here, you have the temperature of the tank, the temperature of the top, the bottom, the flow, the temperature of the supply and return of the collectors, and you have the heat requirement, you have the radiation sensor you can read, you can look at the temperature or you can include a calorimeter. There are a lot of opportunities in using a VBus touch, especially with the iPhone. There is an application I believe for the Blackberry but I know the iPhone we have several dealers that use this and it’s neat to show off. On a good sunny day when you’re meeting with a client somewhere else you can simply pull this up and show them that the system is cranking out at 140 degrees now as we speak and it can be very impressive. Okay, as always I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. But, most importantly thank you for getting a hold of SunMaxx. One way or another, contact us again. Contact your sales rep, contact me if you’d like, and ask us what we can do for you. We want to help you. We want to train you. We want to make you more knowledgeable. We want to make sure you’re installing these right so we’re doing a lot of the homework for you by picking up the parts for your system. I would recommend buying a prepackaged system before anything else. But, once you begin to think out of the box it’s going to be important that you have a very good handle on what controller you need in order to get the job done that you would like to do. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible. Turn to SunMaxx so we can help you figure out what is feasible and make sure you do it right. Thanks again. Get a hold of me and I’ll make sure you get in touch with the right person. Thanks again and have a super solar day. Take care.

Combi Heating System Design 9.13.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS COMBI HEATING SYSTEM DESIGN Date: 09/13/2010 Well I’d like to welcome everyone to Monday’s solar webinar series. Good morning everyone or good afternoon where ever you are in the country. Today I’d like to talk about Combi System designs. The Combi Systems are becoming more and more popular these days. Especially when the quality of the collector increases such that you can really harness a considerable amount of energy in the winter time. So again I’d like to welcome everybody and remind you if you have any questions please feel free to type them in the chat box there. I’ll try my best to get to them. I actually have a lot to talk about today. Any of you that know me realize there’s always a lot to talk about in solar. So I’ll try to keep it to thirty minutes. This is really just an ongoing conversation and this thirty minutes is devoted to Combi System design. Without further adieu…Over the years these are a few things that we’ve realized are most important to consider. In terms of the solar fraction often a higher solar fraction of the Combi Systems and the end result is a much longer payback. So thirty to sixty percent…And sixty is a really high solar fraction for Combi System. Generally the solar fractions that are working the best are in the neighborhood of thirty to forty percent are usually the greatest return. As you may know the reason for that is you produce a considerable amount of Btu’s in the summer time that you can not use. So now that thirty to sixty percent is pretty typical. You can get a higher solar fraction. But there really needs to be a way for you to utilize rather than just dump. But utilize that extra energy that you produce in the summer time. So right off the bat you should always realize and consider that a Combi System is a supplement. It’s just a solar supplementation to your existing fuel source. It supplements it usually in the neighborhood at thirty and at the very high end sixty percent. Another very important consideration is that there has to be a heat dump or a way to get rid of the excess energy. And I know that many of you know this already. Yet there’s still some systems that are over heating. Although you’ve installed a heat dump has it been designed properly? Is it capable of dissipating the appropriate amount of heat? Fluctuating production levels in some cases I know for New York State for example. We might be producing four times or five times the amount of energy in June then we do in December. So it’s very important that we look at the production not the average production or year round production but the production during the summer months. Also roof size is usually the limiting factor for heating systems. So when you’re talking to clients about designing a supplementation solar system. You really have to understand how much solar potential they have on the roof because often for residential systems the roof size is the limiting factor. When you design these systems or choose from some existing designs the ones that are giving us the highest utilization, greatest solar gain are the ones that eliminate as many heat exchanges as possible. I’m going to go through several different design strategies in just a few minutes. And you’ll realize that every time we have a heat exchanger we suffer a performance penalty. Storage volume is probably one of the most important things that you need to properly design. Although your storage is just going to store Btu’s that you can dump into your house. It’s not as straight forward as that because in many different temperature. Ambient temperatures require different quality Btu’s in order to heat your house. So what we’re really after is a balance between creating that quality Btu that you need for your heat dissipaters. But also being able to maximize collector efficiency. So traditionally what happens is the higher the quality the lower the collector efficiencies. So we want to try to identify exactly what that quality Btu is. When I say quality I’m referring to the temperature of the water. Also heat exchangers it can be….You try to design a very simple Combi System using one of the SunMaxx tanks or another type of tank. And you think well I can just add a three way valve and dump it into the house. But the fact is that many heat exchangers inside the storage tanks aren’t necessarily large enough to maintain a temperature in your house. Because the Btu load in your house is greater than the heat exchange capacity of that coil. So you have to understand what the heat exchange capacity is and also the flow rate. I just realized I’ve been talking for five minutes and haven’t had any confirmation. Would somebody please just confirm that they can hear me talk? Now another consideration is the angle…Okay good. Thanks Jamie. Now when you install the collectors you can fluctuate the performance directly by changing the angle. But unlike PV we typically set the angle once at a fixed angle. So you have to realize what it is that you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to create heat in the winter time then you really should set your angle at latitude plus fifteen degrees. The difference in performance although it’s relatively small every little bit helps. So for example if I have a angle my roof at forty five degrees and I want a nice flush mount for aesthetic appeal versus a fifty seven degree pitch. I can expect to lose less than ten percent performance. Probably even closer to five percent loss. But five percent loss might mean several hundred dollars a year. So you have to consider the aesthetic appeal but also the losses in efficiency. And your sales rep can help you determine what those losses will be. And exactly how many Btu’s are you sacrificing for the aesthetic appeal. Lastly and probably the thing that’s going to thread this entire next twenty three minutes together is that low temperature systems have the highest solar yield. Hands down. So there’s a few things that you can do to lower that temperature requirement beyond replacing your entire heating system. But whenever you have the situation that requires low temperature you can get in the neighborhood of forty to fifty percent more energy out of you collectors over the course of the winter with such a system. Okay just to do a quick little review the types of heating systems. You have radiant, the forced hot air and radiant base board. Radiant in floor heat is the lowest temperature of those three. So we see a higher utilization from our solar collectors when we have in floor radiant or sub floor radiant. I’ll talk about that in a few minutes too. Sub floor and in floor are both low temperature. In some cases with a concrete floor we can do ninety to ninety five degrees perhaps even less in the floor to maintain temperature. Where as radiant baseboard often needs one hundred forty and one hundred sixty degree temperature and even higher. So radiant baseboard although very popular in the US and relatively efficient becomes one of the least heating systems for solar tie in. Forced hot air works well although it’s a very inefficient way to heat your house because of the expansion and contraction of the air inside the house. It does have a quick recovery rate so the furnace turns on and the house can heat up in five minutes. Well what happens there is the house will expand. Then as it cools off it’s going to contract and naturally contraction is going to create a low pressure and it’s going to pull cold air in from the environment. Which causes the furnace to kick back on. One good thing about forced hot air with solar is that if you can adjust the fan speed it gives us a much larger degree of temperature range that we can tie into. We can blow a hundred degree air on the house as long as it’s not going to high above the speed. So that gives a lower temperature which means higher utilization on the solar. Just real quick as far as storage capacity. Okay just to throw it out there some of you maybe familiar already. But we typically size up our storage volume anywhere from one to three gallons per foot squared. But in order to determine what ratio we’re shooting for we have to know what the temperature requirement is. So storage capacity is completely dependent on first the temperature requirement. Secondly it’s dependent on the size of the collector array. So for high temperature also means high quality Btu we tend to be on the low end of that ratio. And lower temperature on the higher end. Now with baseboards the efficiency of the baseboard makes all the difference in the world. You can get some standard thin copper but what happens with this is it works very well at high temperatures but it doesn’t work well at all at low temperature. In fact if I send a hundred and twenty degrees through my thin copper. I’m only going to be able to dump thirty percent of the Btu’s into my house then I would if I was sending two hundred degree Fahrenheit water through the thin copper. This is a standard single thin copper run. There’s several different styles of baseboard and obviously the style that works the best with the solar is the one that operates at a lower temperature. You can see the Btu output of per foot with a sixty five degree air temperature. As the temperature increases we get exponential increase in our Btu output. One thing that you can do with regard to an existing non-modulating boiler is you can add…For example Techmar makes an outdoor ambient reset boiler control 256. What this is going to do is compare the outdoor ambient temperature relative to the necessary temperature indoors. And it’s going to re-adjust through some logarithms the necessary temperature of the fluid in the heat dissipaters. So as temperature decreases outdoors the solar utilization increases. And conversely as temperature decreases outdoor the solar utilization decreases. So what this will do is look and see outdoors if the temperature is say forty degrees well if a boiler is normally set at a hundred and seventy degrees. Then the boiler’s going to kick on at a hundred and seventy regardless of the outdoor temperature. An outdoor ambient reset is going to allow you to utilize your solar field for a much longer period of time. Especially during those shoulder seasons at the end of fall and the beginning of spring. Because without a modulating boiler or without an outdoor ambient reset the solar will not work unless it meets the set point of the boiler. What this does is it automatically adjusts the set point of the boiler relative to outdoor air temperature. So this is one of those holistic approaches to reducing and conserving your energy load. This is one of those components that can really save a homeowner the payback on one of these the installation might be one winter season. So it not only does it by itself independently reduce their fuel bill. But it also in conjunction with the solar field it increases utilization. So you get a positive feedback mechanism with an outdoor ambient reset. There’s a lot more I can go into it but I’m really just trying to shoot for a half hour discussion. Just to remind you if you have any questions I’m happy to help you out afterwards or point you in the right direction for some more resources. Heat emitters most radiant heat emitters operate at low temperature. Relatively low temperatures especially the newer ones. The ones we’re bringing over from Germany and Austria. They’ve been operating at lower temperatures for quite some time. They tend to be a bit more expensive. In floor heated slab with a low resistant covering or no covering at all is going to give you the lowest temperature. So you get the same amount of heat delivered into the house at a lower temperature. So the low quality Btu is less expensive. A thin slab on a floor is the next second best thing. I’m getting a message that the video is frozen. I can’t really….I’m going to have to continue because I don’t know if that is the case for everybody. But if for some of you that have technical difficulties this is being recorded so you can always access it again as it is being presented now. One thing we discovered is when it comes to in floor radiant systems. For example concrete the concrete is your thermal mass. And it’s your battery in a sense. So a six inch slab of concrete compared to water it takes about seven square feet. Seven square feet of six inch concrete to store the same amount of energy as six gallons of water. So if we’re designing a heating system and I look at the storage volume. Say I have a storage volume of four hundred gallons. Well four hundred gallons what that really means is that same amount of energy can be stored in seven hundred square feet of concrete slab. Which is a pretty small space. In that same line of thinking we realize that with concrete radiant floor the storage tank really only serves as a buffer. It doesn’t do much for storing energy because all the energy we produce can be stored directly in the floor. So often in knowing that you can get a higher utilization from your collectors with low temperature heat emitters. And some cases it may make sense to replace or supplement your existing heat emitters with low temperature heat emitters. And when done in conjunction with a solar array there’s other tax breaks that you maybe eligible for as well by replacing your heat emitters. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples of Combi System design. This first one is forced hot air. Most people maybe not you folks that are listening now. But most people don’t realize that we can take solar energy in liquid form off of the roof and dump it in through the air with a forced hot air furnace. Now one important note is that on the return plenum or the cold air return comes into the furnace is open and in this case we put the hydronic coil on the supply plenum. You can also put the hydronic coil on the return plenum. Some people have their cooling coil or their AC coil that’s taking up the space. So if you need to this hydronic coil can also go on the return. The only drawback is you’re going to be running hot air across your fan. There’s some speculation as to the longevity of your fan as it relates to having hot air rather than cold air move across it. Just looking at this real quick what we have is two heat exchangers on that solar tank. One heat exchanger on the bottom solar loop then the top coil is tied into the hydronic coil. That circulator between the tank and the hydronic coil will only activate when the set point. The set point of our…This thermostat right here if you can see this top thermistor on the solar tank. When that registers a temperature above the set point of the blower. Then this circulator will kick on if there’s a load. So all we have to do is re-wire the contacts in the furnace. So that when the thermostat calls for heat this takes priority. The solar tank takes priority and the circulator kicks on. When this circulator is on then the fan is one. So the fan actually receives a current from two relays. One relay is in parallel with this pump so that when the pump is one then the fan is on. The second relay is the same relay that fires the furnace. So when the solar tank is not up to temperature the circulator is off which causes the burner to kick on. Which will in turn cause the blower to kick on. Notice where you’re also using the storage tank as a hot and cold water. So the cold water comes into the bottom and as it passes through here to the diverting valve. This is an on demand modulating water heater. As the water passes into this diverting valve if the water is up to temperature already then the water continues on its normal path up to the load. As it reaches the diverting valve and it’s less than desired temperature then the hot water is diverted up into this on demand modulating boiler. Which picks up the slack and then dumps it out to the load. So from a single storage tank we’re tying in a furnace and a modulating boiler. I do realize that I’m going to go through these diagrams pretty quickly. Please remember to always access these they’re available to you and we can help you afterwards. Here’s another example where we have some space heating circuits that are zoned off. There’s a manifold valve actuators on each of the zones. In this case we brought the exchanger outside…External heat exchangers do have a higher efficiency of heat transfer then internal heat exchangers. The drawback is that they do require a second pump. Now there is occasionally some mineralization in on demand and other types of heat sources. So if you have a particularly hard water one of the first things if you haven’t done already is you want to try to treat that water. Many people for example Peter uses a primary secondary piping to prevent mineralization of the on demand. Now that’s a whole other topic all together. Perhaps I can do a webinar on secondary primary piping to avoid mineralization. I want to get through this real quick. Now this external heat exchanger requires that second pump. This is pump is going to be tied in parallel with this pump. So when this pump is on P1 then P3 is going to be on pulling heat out of the top of the tank through the heat exchanger. Just like the diverting valve in the previous diagram. As the return passes through this heat exchanger to the diverting valve if it’s up to temperature then its gong to send the flow back out to the zones. Okay which is going to be delivered by this pressure regulating circulator and these actuators will open to their corresponding zones. If the temperature at this point after the heat exchanger is not up to temp it’s going to run up into the boiler. Where the boiler will pick up the slack and then dump it out. Notice the close spaced tees. These basically promotes a hydraulic separation as it appears this pump one and pump two appear to be in series. But they don’t work against each other nor do they work with each other. Because of these closely spaced tees separate hydraulically these two pumps. So one of the common things that you’re going to see in all of these are a three way diverting valve. Three way diverting valves are easy to use. They run off a simple relay in most of the controllers. Certainly the controllers that SunMaxx offers. Now this next diagram is similar to the one I just showed you. The only difference is if we go back real quickly. In this case we’re using a heat exchanger between our solar tank and our heat zones. In this picture in this diagram we’re using a heat exchanger between our domestic hot water and a solar tank. Now this is very effective way to tie your domestic hot water into a storage tank. This storage tank contains the fluid that’s being delivered to the heat zones. Okay in this case we’re using low temperature panel radiators with thermostatic mixing valves in each room. So the difference just to repeat myself is that in the previous slide we have a heat exchanger externally that separates the heat load with the solar tank. In this diagram we’re using the entire volume of fluid in the tank being delivered to the heat load. Basically you suffer less performance penalty because the differential between the heat load and the solar tank is much less then the differential between the cold water supply and the solar tank. So in a sense you get a better heat transfer through this heat exchanger on the domestic side then you do in this previous picture using the brace plate to separate the solar and the heat. Now this diagram is probably the single best way because we see one heat exchanger here and that’s for your domestic supply. This is a drain back system. Yes, in the previous slide Don just to go back real quick. This heat exchanger is used for the domestic supply. One thing I didn’t mention is there needs to be a flow switch if you’re going to use a heat exchanger on the domestic side. Because this flow switch will activate the circulator that’s going to pull this circulator here…Pulls out of the storage tank under two conditions. One if there’s a load and the tank is up to temperature. The second condition is when there’s flow on this cold water side as indicated by the flow switch. Now back to the drain back system. If you notice the fluid that we’re sending through the collectors in this schematic is being delivered to the house. So the energy that we make is being swept away through the heat transfer fluid. Being stored temporarily in a buffer tank. Then being delivered to the zones. This situation is very similar to what I showed you before. We’re pulling off the top of the tank using a three way diverter valve. If the temperature meets the requirement then the flow continues out to the zones and is delivered by this pressure regulator circulator. If the temperature is not up to the set point then the three way valve will send the return up into the boiler. The boiler being modulating will pick up what it needs to and dump ten, twelve, twenty degrees back into the loop. Then it will send if off into the zones. Well I just had a comment regarding air pads. So regarding this particular set up here perhaps you could elaborate the…I’m not familiar with an air pad. But what we do have here is the drainage of this because of this air pressure control valve. So when these circulators shut off the air is going to rise up the small narrow diameter tube into the collectors. Which is going to cause all the fluid to drain into this pressurized storage tank. Now the coil inside the storage tank is transferring the heat into the domestic supply. So just based on flow no need for a flow switch. As the fluid enters the coils it’s being delivered right out of the tanks. So the only exchange that we have in this setup is the coil. Yeah, I just did have a note regarding air pads. So if anybody would like to comment on an air pad. More than happy to take a moment. Otherwise we’re going to keep on moving forward here. Now heat dumps you definitely need to have some type of a heat dump. If you have a pool you’re in good shape. Good so this air will not leak out of the drain back system. This is a closed loop drain back. There’s no where for air to escape. This bubble of air right here is essentially going to be nitrogen. If it is nitrogen then we know we have a closed loop drain back. The reason its nitrogen is because any of the oxygen that’s been in the system will be oxidized and the remainder of that air will be nitrogen. So with a closed loop system this air bubble is trapped by the force of those pumps right there. Those pumps are trapping the air in here. Once those pumps shut off then the air can escape back up into the collectors. But there’s no where for the air to go. This air is going to be in the tank or it’s going to be in the collectors. PSI is entirely dependent on the head that you have in the system. It’s dependent on the flow. It’s dependent on the pressure drop. PSI is not to exceed ninety. In a situation like this you’re going to need at least one atmosphere. So anywhere to fifteen to ninety PSI. In the event that leaks occur somewhere and you have some problem. Then hopefully this little air release will allow for any of the extra air that was…Eventually when the air comes into the system it’s going to work its way into this bubble. This bubble will displace any of the fluid that’s left up in the collectors as long as they’ve been pitched properly. But that’s a whole other discussion. In fact I think we’re going to do a drain back webinar soon. So I’m definitely going to make note of that and discuss the air elimination strategy. Now sizing heat dump real quick. You have to understand what the maximum production is going to be. The magic number for maximum production per square foot of standard thermal collectors both flat plates and evacuated tubes is 300 Btu’s per hour. So knowing that I have three hundred Btu’s per hour maximum production in June. You size up a heat dump relative to the square footage of your collector. For example if I have a hundred and twenty square feet times three hundred Btu’s an hour I need a heat dump that’s capable of the thirty six thousand Btu’s an hour. Now that’s not a very big heat dump. Most heat dumps in standard hydronic coils like this are going to be good for. Even a small one is forty to fifty thousand Btu’s an hour. I want to show you the picture maybe you’re familiar with a butler max over temperature unit. These are not recommended for Combi Systems as they aren’t as much a heat dump as they are a heat dissipater. Now let me just clarify the difference. A heat dump is something that’s going to actively dump excessive amount of energy out of the loop. These are a very effective insurance in any event that your pump shuts off and it protects your glycol from burning and turning acidic. But it’s not an operational component you should rely on to dump excessive amounts of energy out of your system. Now here’s another example of a heat dump the swimming pool. As you notice on this diagram we’re using again a three way diverting valve. Now this three way diverting valve is going to be drawn off of a relay from the controller. And it essentially heat exchanger is in parallel with your solar storage tank. So when your solar storage tank is up to temperature as indicated by the differential controller. The three way valve will automatically open. Now many of your controllers have thermostatic functions as well as differential functions. So in this case you’re going to use your differential controller’s thermostatic function. That is once this sensor at the top of the tank reaches one hundred and seventy five degrees. Whether the solar loop is running or not it’s automatically going to send voltage to this valve. Which is going to open it towards the shallow tube heat exchanger side. What that’s going to do if your solar circulator is still running. Your supply side of the collector is going to pass through the shallow tube and you’re going to bypass the storage tank. Now pools take a tremendous amount of Btu’s. So rarely is a pool unable to handle the Btu load produced. But to play it safe you should still understand the maximum production. Another way to size up a pool in terms of a heat dump is you want a one square foot of pool for every square foot of collector. If you’re less than that then you’re good to go. If you’re more than that then you should consider an extra heat dump. So one square foot of surface area to one square foot of area for the pool collector to pool 1:1 you should be good or less. Now in terms of storage tank. One thing I want you to notice here is that the solar fraction begins to drop off as you increase your storage tank size. So the recommendations that we make in terms of storage tank size relative to your collector field. Is completely dependent on your temperature requirement. As I mentioned before the lower the temperature requirement the larger the storage tank volume. But you reach a point where the storage tank volume becomes a hindrance to your total system efficiency because of all the losses. The thermal losses through conduction and radiation out of your storage tank become a hindrance to your total system efficiency. Although there’s a lot of different ideas and schools of thought in terms of storage tank. One thing’s for sure as you approach four to five gallons of storage per square foot of collector. The system efficiency will begin to drop. Solar fraction will also drop. It won’t continue to increase like this and you do see the relationship. So what you need to do is try to find and pinpoint where that intercept is. And that intercept is dependent on your temperature requirement. Another consideration is that your storage capacity can fluctuate. So we try to design systems that have fluctuating storage capacities whether we use two tanks or we maximize the stratification of one tank. And play with the stratifications so that in a sense we can have two storage tanks inside one storage. Because your production changes all the time as does your consumption. It’s not as straight forward relationship. So most heat exchangers are going to operate at about fifty percent for external heat exchangers and internal heat exchangers often times or even less than that. So here’s an example where you can design a system with two storage tanks to fluctuate the volume. These are in parallel off of the same solar loop. With a Combi System controller you have the ability to not only energize your solar loop and your re-circulation loop and have a high temperature shut off. You can have freeze protection and a Btu meter and variable speed drive. But you also want to be able to control your diverting valves. Those diverting valves not only tie into heating systems effectively but they can also be tied to multiple tanks. So whether you do multiple tanks in series or in parallel as shown here. So we have tank prioritization going on where the domestic hot water is taken care of for. The tank to your left or anatomical right is the domestic hot water tank. Once that tank is up to temperature the diverting valve will automatically send the solar fluid into the bottom coil of the second tank. Any surplus energy is then used to tie into heating system using the conventional method that I showed you before. The controllers that are used for Combi Systems are slightly more complex then your standard domestic hot water controller. Well, Don this would be an example where you’re not using glycol. Some systems are just using water and they’re circulating from the storage tank up to the roof at night when the temperature drops below thirty five. Its sacrifices estimated of ten to fifteen percent of your annual production. But some places some clients don’t want to use glycol at all. That gives you an ability to do that. The IntellaMaxx Combi Plus has twelve sensors. It allows you to tie into nine different. I has nine different functionalities. So it has pump logic and also valve logic. So we can control several different heating system, domestic hot water system, pumps and dump loops. So here’s an example I know you can’t see this. I took it right out of the manual for the IntellaMaxx Combi Plus. Just to point out though the important take away here is there’s several different arrays that you choose from. When you’re designing your Combi System try to stick with what we know works. So you might download our Combi Plus manual just to get an idea of what types of strategies you can use for a heating system. So I think that’s an important point and I’m going to repeat it. If you go to sunmaxxsolar.com you can find this manual. Download the Combi Plus manual just to see what the possibilities are so you have a framework that you’re working within. And try to design systems based on what works and what already works. I know many of you like to think out of the box which is a great thing. If you do come up with a great idea that you want to try out. Please consult one of your SunMaxx representatives or our engineering design team. Just to get a feel for how well we think it’s going to work and if there’s any drawbacks to it. So basically for Combi System you want to pick one of these arrays that seems to represent what you’re trying to do. It can be tweaked and modified a little bit. But you want to stick with… These systems have been proven and tested for many years in Europe. That’s how the controllers have been designed around systems that were working properly. So the functionality of the Combi Plus represents tried and true methods of Combi System layouts in Europe. I want to leave you with this website if you download the pdf it’s hyperlinked. The website is solarage. It’s www/solarage.com. What solarage is it’s basically case studies of European Combi Systems and there are hundreds of large scale, small scale, residential and commercial Combi System designs. Solar fractions detailed at post installation analysis and a lot of software was used to describe the performance of these. Your clients might want to see it as well. So I strongly encourage you to check out solarge if you are inclined for some case studies, analysis of these systems having been installed and maintained in Europe for a long time. I’ve gone over a little bit. But I would like to thank you for your attention. I want to remind you to visit solarwebinars.com for any archives. I did go a little bit fast. This Combi System is really a day or two or three days of discussion and training. The solar webinar series is designed to really just help you out and answer some questions that you have. To stimulate thought and really get you thinking. Really bring everyone together on the same page and be a resource for everyone. I’m always open for future suggestions for future webinars. I’m doing one today on drain back systems. So thanks Pete for those recommendations. I’m interested to learn more from you about the side arm heat analysis. So thanks again everyone I hope you have a great solar day. The weather is turning a little bit maybe that’s the best for some of you. But here in upstate New York it typically means low solar production and cold weather. So I’m trying to make the most of it. Have a great solar day everyone. Take care.

Solar Thermal Piping 9.1.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR THERMAL PIPING Date: 09/01/2010 All right, well today’s topic is going to be solar thermal piping, and as many of you may know there’s a tremendous variability in the way you pipe a system, and piping really does influence performance in many ways. Not only performance, but also cost. So you’ve got to try to maximize performance and minimize cost, so there’s a few things you have to consider and what I’ve seen most is that guys are using pipe sizing that is too big. Too big in the sense that it works and there’s really no downside other than initial cost, and you would sacrifice a little bit of performance. So, we’ll move right along here. When you’re designing a system, there are certain considerations that have to be made with regard to piping. Before I go too far, I should have done this - can someone confirm that you can hear me? I’m sure you can, but I like to find out ahead of time before I get too far into the meeting. All right, great, thanks. Okay, so obviously piping is really going to be determined on flow rate, okay I don’t want to state the obvious, but flow rate is probably the most important factor in maximizing collector efficiency. So the flow rate is dependent on the collector, and the piping is dependent on the flow rate. So, I’m going to talk more about how to determine flow rate, and why it’s important in sizing up your system. Also, for those of you who aren’t hearing anything, it must be a local issue. Perhaps you can make some adjustments on your speaker volume, and if we go through this and unfortunately if you can’t still hear, then you might access the archives and you’ll be able to. Okay, now your pipe sizing is also - you have to consider the temperature, not just the pipe sizing, but the type of pipe used. Many people are inclined to go with the least expensive, of which would be some pex tubing. Now as most of you know, pex tubing cannot be used for solar thermal systems. The rating at 180 degrees is still, if the system is running well, 180 is fine, but if Murphy has anything to do with it, there will be times when you might bring a 220 degree shot of steam down off of the roof, in which case it would melt and violently explode your pex. So, as a manufacturer, we recommend that you don’t use pex tubing at any part of the solar loop. Now pressure drop is another important consideration because it over the life of the system, the more pressure drop the more energy you’re going to have to consume with the pump and then that energy cost money. So you want to try to design the system that first accommodates the flow rate, but also reduces the pressure drop. Now, obviously as I said before, you want to have the smallest diameter pipe possible, but the smaller diameter pipe also increases pressure drop, so there’s an intercept that we have to identify with the least pressure drop and the smallest diameter. Volume inside the piping is another important consideration because volume in some regards can be used as a buffer. Especially with larger systems, we can step up the size of the pipe because we want a larger volume of fluid in the pipe to act as a buffer because perhaps we’ve reduced the storage volume. And that can impact your system volume in your storage by 100 or 200 gallons by changing the diameter of the pipe, particularly for commercial jobs. Installation and aesthetics, you know as you see this picture here, there’s probably about 18 feet of piping, but it’s been designed in a way that you see only about 3 feet of it. So you really want to consider how you’re going to pipe it, how it’s going to look on the roof, and then ultimately the cost. So, first of all, as I said, the most important thing is determining flow rate. So flow rate has to be determined by the total foot of the collector. If you have certain collectors in banks or in rows, then each row is going to have to have its own unique flow rate. Now if the layout of the system is not balanced, each array or each row may receive a different flow rate. The only real way to accomplish that unbalanced system is through the use of balancing valves, which I’ll talk about a little bit more later. So for flat plates, the TitanPower, now this is unique to this manufacturer’s recommendations, obviously other manufacturers will have different recommendations, but we recommend a .022 gallons per minute per foot squared. Okay, so that is for all collectors in series. So one collector in series would be 21 square feet times .022, if you had 10 collectors in series, then it’s 10 times 21 times .022. Now you’re going to add the parallel arrays to get your total GPM, but each array will have a unique GPM. So, when you’re doing these calculations, you first have to add up the total square footage of each row, and then add the rows together. For vacuum tubes, the thermal power brand, we recommend .028. Now these flow rates are very closely connected, so if you were to build a hybrid system, which I know Pete Skinner of E2G Solar has been doing some studies on the use of hybrid systems, where we’re flowing flat plate into vacuum tube, and interestingly enough time and again those hybrid systems have been outperforming both the flat plate and the similar sized vacuum tubes. That’s a discussion in itself. But if you do, then knowing that the flow rate required for each of those are close enough that you would probably shoot for middle of the road, so with a hybrid system you would go with .025, okay. Now, the flow rate then, once you’ve established your flow rate, then we have to determine what size diameter is going to be able to handle that pipe. Now generally you want to use the smallest diameter pipe. We have some systems out in California that are running with 3/8 copper tubing. Now the diameter of the pipe is really going to determine how many total BTUs can be transferred through there. And it always works out that the limiting factor of the flow rate for the collectors is usually less than what the BTU capacity that diameter pipe is anyway. So, there’s two ways to size pipe. One would be how many BTUs can you actually transfer through that diameter pipe, and the other is what’s the flow rate required for the collectors? And so we’ve always found that by using the flow rate to the collectors, you’re always going to be able to handle the minimum, or at least you’ll be producing less than the minimum BTUs that that diameter pipe can transfer, if you understand what I meant there. So, total flow is really a function of velocity times volume. So, if we know we need a certain flow through the collectors, we have to understand what the volume in the collectors are, or in the piping, and then the velocity. Now the velocity, we can obviously increase the flow without increasing the volume simply by increasing the velocity, but there’s a threshold of velocity that we need to stay less than, and that’s 5 feet per second. One of the dangers is you get some particulate abrasion, the friction that’s created against the walls of the soft Type L copper, even the stainless steel, over time will erode the manifolds, the inside of the flat plates. So I'll show you some charts in just a few moments. It looks at the function of velocity and volume and how it relates to flow rate. Another consideration for pipe size is the pressure drop. So the higher the velocity, the greater the pressure drop. The larger the diameter, the lower the pressure drop. So as I said, we want to find that intercept between having the smaller diameter pipe possible, keeping that velocity less than five feet per second, and reducing the pressure drop. Anybody have any questions? Okay, it appears on my screens that you may not be able to read this chart. And I can make this available to you. This comes out of the U.S. solar handbook that was written back in the '80s. And I'll reference it for everybody at the end, if you like. But basically this lays out for us examples of different pipe sizes and flow rates, using a 50/50 mix of propylene glycol and 150 per foot is going to give us, if we're using half-inch, about a 14 psi drop in pressure. And as you can see, if we increase the velocity from 4 feet per second to 6 feet per second, the pressure drop doubles. So an increase of 30% in velocity, the pressure drop doubles. So that's a pretty consistent relationship that you have to remember. It's a disproportionate increase. And that's true with any diameter pipe. So we really have to be careful of increasing the velocity too much. Another consideration is balancing the system. So once we've determined our pipe diameter, for example, just to back up one second. If we typically install ours for residential system, we'll go with 3/4" pipe. Without really making any other considerations, 3/4" pipe would work and it makes your decision easy. But the difference of 3/4" pipe, perhaps you can use 1/2". For a one-collector or two-collector job, your flow rates only going to be about 1 to 2 gallons a minute. And at 2 gallons a minute, we can use the 1/2" pipe. So you're going to be able to save, if you have 200 feet of piping, you can save a considerable amount of money by reducing that pipe volume, or pipe diameter. So I want to point your attention to the fact that many times, and I say that with a lot of experience, most systems that I've been involved with selling or designing, the initial design always has pipes that are oversized. Now, that's not a 100% "you've got to reduce the pipe," because, remember, the larger volume means lower pressure drop. And a lot of the pumps that come into our pump stations and other manufacturers' similar pump stations, they're really designed for optimum operation at 3 to 4 gallons per minute. So when we get up to 5 or 6 collectors, that is to say, 150 square feet a collector, then it's time to go to a larger pump. But anything less than that, you should consider reducing the volume or the diameter of the pipe. Now onto balancing systems. Now, as I mentioned flow rate being most important, you have to make sure that each array has the appropriate flow rate. Putting collectors up on the roof, piping them according to manufacturer specs, and then walking away and looking at your flow rate down at the pump station, you may know you're sending 2 gallons a minute up to the roof. But if you have multiple arrays or several rows or even two rows or two collectors in parallel, you have to be sure that each collector is receiving the right flow. And there's really two ways to do this. The most traditional is reverse return piping. By making sure that each loop has the same pressure drop, the pressure drop in that case would be a function of the pipe length. So by using reverse return, you balance the pressure drop. By balancing the pressure drop, you indirectly balance the flow rates. Now flat plates, most of them on the market now use internal reverse return piping. So I'll show you some diagrams here momentarily. Even though you may assemble the collectors in series, internally they're really piped in parallel. Yeah, I just got a reminder. All of our webinars are archived at solarwebinar.com. And I think we're up to 11 now, maybe 12. So you can always access these. If you have to leave, I certainly wouldn't be offended. But please remember that if there's questions, feel free to ask them now. I'll just give you my e-mail later. You can e-mail me. And as always, you can access these archives at solarwebinars.com. One of the considerations with reverse return, especially in colder climates, is you do suffer from a greater amount of heat loss, because you will have more external piping. The other option for balancing systems is to use balancing valves. One thing I've noticed with talking to 3,000 or more installers across the country is, generally, there's a division between reverse return piping has generally been accepted by plumbers. Plumbers tend to use reverse return piping. And it guarantees that a system will be balanced inherently based on the pressure drop. Yes, there is audio recording as well, Eric. Yup. Balancing valves have been most often adopted by HVAC professionals. Now balancing valves will cost a little bit more, but they can be adjusted. So if you add onto an array or you reduce an array, you can always adjust it. So it's much easier, I think, over the life of the system to ensure the proper flow rate through the use of balancing valves. A drawback, obviously, is it will cost you a little bit more. And it does increase the pressure drop, which means that you will need a larger pump. And lastly, the balancing valves will go bad. Everything has a life, a shelf life. A valve will go bad before a pipe goes bad. So if long-term maintenance is an issue and a concern of yours, then you probably would consider doing reverse return. Now as I mentioned, I just want to point out, these half-hour webinars are intended to peak you interest, to help answer some questions you have. But it's very difficult to cover everything that I'd like to say about piping in 30 minutes. So I just want to remind you to e-mail me questions. We can help answer anything else, beyond what I can cover in just 30 minutes. Piping series vs. parallel. Many of you may understand the efficiency and how efficiency is determined, whether it's TI - TA and the fact that the colder the temperature coming in, ultimately the higher the efficiency will be for the collector. So by putting collectors in parallel, each collector will have the same Delta-T, and thus each collector will exhibit not only the same efficiency, but you'll have higher efficiencies in each of those collectors. Now that efficiency increase is really proportionate to the size of the system. So if you only have two collectors, you're not going to see much difference, whether you put those collectors in series vs. parallel. But in a larger system, in the end, parallel banks will yield a higher efficiency. It also does lower the pressure drop, which will cost you less money or cost the client less money in the end. Putting banks in parallel does require more external piping as well. So external piping means more heat loss. So these are considerations. It's not an end-all. It's not going to answer everything. But you do have to consider how much external piping will I need if I put these banks in parallel. Now in series, it's a trade-off, although you will lower the efficiency, the result will be a higher temperature. So we've been doing this a lot with systems where we're tying into heating systems that have a high temperature load. The more--

SunMaxx Product Overview 8.23.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS PRODUCT OVERVIEW Date: 08/23/2010 Ok, well good morning folks. This is our 10th edition of the SunMaxx Solar webinar series. I’d like to start on time and I know people will join as we go along here. So today’s webinar is going to be on product. The various SunMaxx brands that we have established, and some of the details surrounding those, and I would just like to remind everyone that you can ask questions in the chat box. Ok, so, over the last couple of years, SunMaxx has developed a brand and within the brand we have developed different associated icons for all of our components, so if you look at this flow chart, it just, it’s going to layout the guidelines- the format for our discussion today. It starts with our collectors. Okay, we have two different styles as you know the evacuated tube and the flat plate. The flat plate collectors we have branded as TitanPower, so SunMaxx TitanPower, and then the evacuated tube collectors have been branded ThermoPower. So those are the two main divisions, each of which can be designed and integrated into systems that include the rest of the components. Going counter clockwise, you see ConnectMaxx. ConnectMaxx is our system of option hardware, they can be designed for single collectors or as in the most recent job at Harvard, the entire mounting system was pre-fabricated-- pre-engineered/pre-fab, and installed very easily on the roofs of Harvard. This you know we have a newly commissioned 150 TitanPower Plus collector system on Harvard. Okay, another brand is StorMaxx. StorMaxx is our line of tanks both pressurized and non-pressurized. And IntelliMaxx. IntelliMaxx are the controllers, and the associated components, flow meters, and BTU meters. And then line set, we have branded as FlowMaxx, and so the FlowMaxx line set includes 5/8 inch, 3/4 inch, 1 inch, flexible stainless steel. And then our pump stations that tie everything together we refer to as our UniMaxx. Now these names are going to be the precursor to the sku. So, for instance if you are looking for a vacuum heat pipe, it will be thermal power vhp30, or pump station, it would be UniMaxx 3/4 inch line set would be FlowMaxx 3/4, okay, and lastly we have a line of PV panels that we're referring to as GridMaxx. Now just to let you know our GridMaxx panels are among the highest performers, especially after 30 years, I believe it's still 80% after 30 years. Okay, so this is our branding structure. And then in the center of it all, the heart of our company is our training. We feel very strongly-- we believe the power of education, and hence the name EduPower. So SunMaxx EduPower --thanks Carl--, SunMaxx EduPower is our branding for our training. Now we train not only installers and dealers, but we also do homeowner training, we do distributor training, training for engineers, training for architects, training for sales reps, training for designers and training for trainers. So we feel that in order for us to be-- have a sustainable business model, our systems need to be designed and installed properly. And the number one thing that we can do is train them. Everything we know, we want to be able to convey to our dealers and installers immediately, so we have best practices, and we have all of our product updates, and everything that we know, you know. And we do that through our training program. Webinar series is one example of how SunMaxx is dedicated to increasing public awareness. Okay, let's get on with things. So, what I have in mind here is to go over all the different products and some of the things that you may or may not remember. A couple of the selling features and the installing features, some key points for installation. The TitanPower flat plates are our latest-- latest and greatest I suppose. They've caught on really quick. They are a high performer, they're small, very manageable, with only 21 square foot absorber. Another thing that I like about them is the compression fittings. On the right hand side you see a female. 2 - 1/4 inch females, and on the right hand side of the collector are the male connections. So it allows you to mount one collector right next to another with only about an inch and a half in between. The tinox absorber used in the TitanPower Plus is welded ultra-sonically to the risers. This gives a clear linear formation which makes it-- increases its aesthetic appeal. Internally the collectors piped in reverse return. So you don't need any additional piping between the collectors at all. We can put 10 of these in series, okay, so for commercial jobs, it becomes very appealing to be able to mount one collector right after another without any external piping whatsoever. Each collector is usually-- gets about 1/2 a gallon per minute. More specifically, it's about .022 gallons per minute per square ft of collector. And the collector is 21 square ft. Also it's one square meter by 2 square meter, so it makes it very easy for sizing systems when we base them on square meters. One of these high performing flat plates can produce about 40 to 60 gallons of hot water per day depending on, obviously, your location. Another thing I like about it which you can sort of see here in this picture is the very thin profile. The glass covers about 97% of the entire surface, so there is no lip or edge on the collector itself. And there is a very high tech ventilation system which prevents any calcium buildup from the inside of the collector. We'll find, even though this is a relatively new collector to the market, I'm certain that we'll see over the next year or two that this rises to the top, based on some of the features, and not only on performance. Okay, with your TitanPower Plus collectors, you're gonna receive a universal connection set. Now this connection set allows you to pipe in a very slick format-- or in a very nice way, it looks highly professional. But more importantly, these connection sets come with ports for your sensor. It comes with a manual air vent. And they come with plugs and caps when, obviously, a plug for the female side and a cap for the male side. It allows you to mount your quick connect from your line set directly to the connection set so there is no for-- no need whatsoever for sweating. And just to remind you that if I have 10 collectors in series, I only need one connection set, because the collectors will mount to one another, okay. So I use one connection set for one collector, or I use one connection set for 10 collectors. You need one connection set for the number of rows that you have, okay. Just to show a little bit-- a closeup. This connection set comes with a cap and a plug and it screws right to the male side, and the opposite is true for the female. This one mounts to the female side, and you see this dry well port that screws in, this allows the sensor to be embedded into the manifold without increasing any potential loss or degradation of the sensor because it's not bathed in the fluid. Okay, the mounting hardware that's associated with our collectors is universal, okay. We have the hangar bolts with the clips. A couple of different style of mounting hardware. In fact we are modifying it slightly to make our mounting hardware truly universal for both our vacuum heat pipes and our TitanPowers. But the flat plate itself is frameless in that it doesn't require additional support so this T profile you see, there is one at the top and one at the bottom that is stabilized with these bolts that bolt directly to the collector. That makes for the installation very easy. Okay, our ThermoPower, we have two styles, the vacuum heat pipe and vacuum direct flow. VHP will be the 3 letter sequence that's used to describe the vacuum heat pipe collectors. This one on the roof is a vacuum heat pipe and it has leading SRCC performance per dollar. Most of you are familiar with our SunMaxx 20, SunMaxx 25, SunMaxx 30, these are now referred to as ThermoPower, VHP ThermoPower, and VDF, that's the vacuum direct flow. Vacuum direct flow is used for when we have a façade mount, when we want to mount it on the façade so you increase your winter time production and decrease your production in the summer. These façade mounts for heat pipe--sorry for vacuum tubes can only be used with a direct flow. Remember the heat pipe requires an angle. We have to mount our heat pipes at 15 to 75 degrees and the U-pipes or the direct flow can be mounted at any angle whatsoever. So in this photo you see both the heat pipe and the direct flow. The direct flow is not SRCC certified however, so it's very important to make that clear expectation upfront. So your savings comes on the front end rather than on the backend, because the direct flow produces more BTU's per dollar, than the heat pipe does, given its existing low price for the direct flow. Okay, a couple things I want to point out that this PowerPoint is available to your at SolarWebinars.com and go into the archives section. You have the PDF's of all these PowerPoint that you can use as a reference. So although I may go fast, please remember this is all available to you in PDF form at SolarWebinars.com. So the ThermoPower vacuum heat pipe has a large coated condenser, its nickel coated and-- [Carl the name changed only, everything else is the same, we have just gone with ThermoPower to describe our vacuum heat pipes]. The manifold has a flow rate of 3/4 inch which means we can get about 7 gallons a minute through one of the manifolds. 7 gallons a minute however, means that we can only put 210 tubes in series, okay. Remember the flow rate is dependent on the number of tubes and for example the ThermoPower VHP has a flow rate of .028 gallons per minute per tube. So when we average that out, we try to keep our velocity less than 5 1/2 feet per second. It tells us that we can basically put about 210 tubes in series. Now be very cautious, there are a lot of other considerations that need to be made, but as a general rule of thumb, 210 tubes can be the maximum that we are gonna put in series, okay. Okay, just to break down the vacuum heat pipe again, you have your twin tube, which is the double walled glass tube with a selective coating on the inside, the heat transfer fin which is aluminum, as that aluminum heats up it increases the surface area contact of the glass, it also squeezes the heat pipe which its surrounding, and the heat pipe remember has a vacuum that causes a low boiling point in this secret solution inside the heat pipe that I can't tell you about -- water. And as the water boils, it rises up into the condenser valve and transferred into the dry fit of the manifold. A couple of things that I wanted to remind everybody, the gasket-- when you install these heat pipe--the gasket needs to be inserted prior to putting the glass tube in. And once you have the glass tube in the bottom, then you're gonna put this high temperature silicon grease around the nickel coating. And if you do this as the picture shows, it creates a nice even spread. Just to remind you, some guys are forgetting to that even though it says it. Now our StorMaxx-- our tanks are referred to as StorMaxx, okay. So we have our TitanPower, we have our ThermoPower, and our storage tanks are referred to as StorMaxx. We have 3 options really here. We have two pressurized, which are the StorMaxx DW, and the StorMaxx-Ptec, okay. Those are both pressurized tanks. Our StorMaxx MP is our non-pressure series. I'll talk more about that in just a moment. So with the StorMaxx DW, DW stands for double walled, okay, there are many situations across the country where double walled heat exchangers are required, and if that's the case our StorMaxx DW is gonna suit that need. The Ptec is our latest tank and it's as highly, highly well designed tank that we've manufactured in Germany that has an enamel coating, and a couple of other features that I'll talk about in just one second. Okay, now back to the StorMaxx pressurized DW. This is a-- has a Hydrastone lining on the inside of the tank. Now what this does is it prevents, and it really prolongs corrosion of the tank itself. It allows-- it's porous, but it doesn't allow for the direct exposure of oxygen to the steel, okay. And obviously, oxygen is the root of all corrosion problems, so by eliminating that with a Hydrastone, you prolong the life of the tank. It does mean that the tank is considerably more expensive. StorMaxx DW, an 80 gallon tank might retail for, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 - 1700 dollars. But what your gonna get is two removable double walled heat coils, okay. Those double walled heat exchangers required for OG300 systems and it's got a pretty high output. 90,000 BTUs an hour is an extremely high output for a copper coil-- a submerged copper coil. Another feature is that it's removable, so if the coil needs to be serviced or replaced, it can very easily removed, and additionally, there's an existing 5000 watt heating element. So this StorMaxx DW becomes-- although it's slightly more expensive up front-- it becomes a stand alone, in that it has a heating element at 5000 watts, should cover everything you need. It also has a removable heating coil, and it's quite heavy. So once it gets down in the basement, you probably won't need to or want to remove that for quite some time. And additionally, it's made in the US. Okay, our PTEC tank-- I really like this new PTEC tank because it's got a couple-- it's got dual protection-- triple protection against corrosion, first of which is the enamel coating. The enamel coating is baked on and it's in accordance with DIN4753 part 6. It also has two coils-- two steel coils the tank. The bottom coil is used for a solar loop, top coil is used for a heating loop or a recirculation loop. It also has one inch ports, now this is good especially when you're talking about light commercial. So one inch port, it's gonna allow you for a good cold water flow of 12-15 gallons a minute, which means car washes, laundry mats, things like that, the StorMaxx PTEC is a perfect solution. Another component-- or a feature of the PTEC tanks is the 4 inch port on the back that allows you to clean these tanks out. I know for a fact that hotels perform tank maintenance often, and they can really extend the life of their tank by draining it out, by cleaning the debris from the bottom, and that debris can be anything from manganese or bits and pieces of calcium-- some calcium carbonate-- but that 4 inch port on the bottom allows you to clean that out completely. It also has a nice beefy anode coming down right from the top. It's a very thick anode, and it's gonna prevent corrosion. The life expentancy of these tanks is equal to the life expectancy of the whole system . This will not be a limiting factor for you. A good 20 years you should expect out of this system . There is not a heating element included, however there is an inch and half port that you can add a heating element, okay. So for-- I believe these PTEC tanks are less than 1000 dollars, 80 gallons. They come in 65, 80, 105 and 130, with larger sizes to be offered soon. It's a very good solution for heating system and Combi system tie ins. Okay, with the non-pressure tanks, one of the benefits of this is that you can take it down to different spaces where you wouldn't normally be able to fit a 200 or 300 or 400 gallon storage tank. It's fully collapsible and it's easily moved by two people. And once it's in place, somebody literally gets inside the tank and forces the sides out until it fits into a pre-cut bottom to represent the necessary dimensions. Now each of these tanks is customizable so depending on your situation and you've worked with your sales rep, we will design this tank for you to suit your needs. The different design issues are open port vs. closed ports, different number of coils, the length of the coils the diameter of the coils, the proper flow rate, the level inside the tank that you want to extract the heat from. So there is different considerations that we can make for these things. And if it's installed properly you should see a good 20 to 30 years out of it because there's-- internally there's nothing that's gonna corrode. Having non-pressure-- anything that’s relieved of pressure always have a longer life expectancy. The limiting factor here would be temperature. So you've gotta be sure to begin taking heat out of the tank once we approach-- it's really 180, but you want to probably start removing heat as soon as you get around 170, you want to begin taking heat out. So these are all custom built and a really good solution, especially for larger systems-- I have a couple of tanks in place that are about 4000 gallons and they serve as a pre-heat to a hotel with 65 gallons a minute requirement. So we can do just about anything that you need to do with these StorMaxx non-pressure tanks. [Carl, the lining is EPDM, so that will theoretically begin to melt at those higher temperatures. And so the manufacturer recommends the temperature under the boiling point, or melting point, obviously of that rubber, and we recommend a temperature less than the recommended temperature by the manufacturer which is less than the melting point of the EPDM. So we recommend that you begin to dump heat off at 165, certainly by 175.] Okay, our StorMaxx non-pressure exchangers, we use copper coil-- I'm not going to go too much detail for the sake of time, but for the solar domestic water loops, we have 60, 90, and 120 foot coils. And typically size up the solar and domestic hot water loop based on the number of BTU's that it can exchange. For example, six TitanPowers has an absorber of 126 square feet. Now I would typically decide to go with 1 foot of coil per 1 foot of collector, but to be specific, we need 105 feet of coil. So I'm always inclined to round up when it comes to heat exchangers, so for a 105 foot requirement, I'm gonna recommend a 120 foot, and same is true for heating loops, you can see it here on the right hand side of this graph or this slide. If you have any questions, please do email me and I can go over some of the things specifically, or your sales rep is trained to be able to answer any questions regarding heat exchangers. Now there are pump stations, as I mentioned, we referred to our pump stations as UniMaxx, the UniMaxx-Plus and the UniMaxx-PlusB. Basically the same components, the UniMaxx-Plus however has our BS plus controller which has two relays. The UniMaxx-PlusB does not have a controller. They are all brass components, PAW is the manufacturer of the components. The UniMaxx-Plus has an air separator, temperature gauges, port for the expansion tank, relief valve is set at 87. There is a well designed fill station that directly connects to our fill station, a flow meter for direct assessment of flow, and ports for the supply and return. Again, for the sake of time, I will go relatively quick, but you are more than welcome to email me if you have any further questions. And we have two pumps with our pump stations, the Wilo and the Grundfos both of which have different pump curves. I just want to point out that we do consider your headloss very specifically when we make our recommendations as to what size pump you're going to use. So before we just throw out a system of pre-packaged kit, it is very important for us to understand what your flow rate requirement is and what your pressure drop will be. The UniMaxx-PlusB is a simpler version of the UniMaxx-Plus, as well as it does not have a controller. So for those of you who need a pump station without a controller, you'll probably be better off going with the UniMaxx-PlusB, and you can see the pump performance here on the little chart. All connections are 3/4 inch NPT, and it uses a 6 gallon tank for the expansion vessel. Now the IntelliMaxx is our brand for controllers. Generally we offer two different brands, one is the DHW Plus, and the other is the Combi-Plus. We do have some variations of these two controllers, but for the most part, you order IntelliMaxx controller, our designers will choose from one of these two, the DHW Plus, or the Combi-Plus. The DHW Plus is the basic controller, it has two relays, a thermostat function which allows it to operate at a set temperature, rather than at a differential, so to clarify, it has differential function, obviously, but in addition to the differential function it has thermostat function. And this is nice because you can set a heat dump at 165. So once the temperature of S2 reaches 165, the contacts in that relay will close, and it's not different on the differential, rather than a thermostat function. Okay, it can accept up to four PT1000 sensors. With your controller you'll get a black sensor and a grey sensor. Okay, the black sensor is always used for the -- for the solar loop, because it's heat resistant. You can choose from 10 different sensors -- 10 different systems with this controller and it also allows you to attach the Vbus. The Combi-Plus now has 12 sensor inputs. So rather than having 2 relays, like the DHW B Plus, this one has 9 relays. 9 relays give you a tremendous amount of options. So I believe there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-32 different systems that can be programmed using the IntelliMaxx Combi-Plus. Now we have shopped around and we've looked at the different functionality of different controllers and we feel very strongly that this Combi-Plus controller is the most versatile that we can offer in trying to standardize things as much as possible. The controller accessories-- the IntelliMaxx-Ezlog, the IntelliMaxx-Flow and the EZConnect, these are things that are used to monitor your system, so if you'd like to monitor performance then you are going to need the IntelliMaxx Flow, this sends an analog signal to the Ezlog which then is converted into BTUs because if we know the flow rate and we know the temperature across the exchanger then we can very easily determine the BTU production. So the Ezlog will allow you to dump into a computer either using a wireless modem or using a cable plugged directly into the hard drive, and that way you can access the data over long periods of time to study performance. It's very good marketing, for case study analysis. We have many installers that will install these into their clients systems for an added cost of maybe 400 dollars. It allows them to monitor systems and use those monitoring devices for marketing. Our FlowMaxx line set, like I mentioned before, comes in 5/8, 3/4, and 1 inch diameter. They come in rolls of 35, 50, and 80 foot, and when you look at the price of a substitute, let's say [] copper, with your closed cell alter temp foam, with the thermostat wire already included, and then the labor involved, it really makes sense to go with a flexible line set. For one thing the labor involved is minimum, you could have an 80 foot run with only 2 fittings and go-- you don't have to-- especially when you are going through crawl spaces, or attic spaces, or chase ways, you can run this right down. Now you also want to look at the aesthetics, you know, if you've got along run where you're really looking for a straight line, well maybe that's an opportunity to go with just some straight copper and you can very easily tie copper into this and then go from this back into copper. So you might look at a combination approach. In my mind, the flexible stainless steel is most beneficial for places where you need to flex. So it is a good product and it's at a great price, so if you looking to increase your efficiency, and increase your revenue, this might be an opportunity for you to do that. Just to show you real quick how we connect our fittings, all we need to do is use a standard pipe cutter, put the nut in place, and then the C clamp - clamps in place, we bring the nut up and then we tighten it using a-- two pipe wrenches. Tighten that plug down into the nut that you seated on to the stainless steel first, and what that's gonna do is take that aluminum plate that you put in place and create a flange. And that used in conjunction with the graphite washer will never leak, and in fact the more torque you put on this, the tighter the seal. There is a limit, but you really-- you won't be able to put much more torque than what's required anyway. We've installed lots of these systems with using nothing but flexible stainless steel and our quick connects and no leaks right off the bat. I highly recommend trying these out. Now our fill station is an accessory product that we offer. It has a half horse power pump, and it's really gonna increase your efficiency of your installations. The added cost up front is gonna pay for itself the first couple of jobs, easily. It holds 8 gallons of glycol and water mixture, it can pressurize up to-- I believe it can pressurize up to 70-75psi, and it's just a cleaner job. You take your hoses, hook it up to the filling station that you can see on this diagram, and then flick the switch, it does it for you. It's got a filter; that's one of the nice befits about this is, there's a little filter down at the bottom that allows you to basically fill your system up first time without having to purge it. A lot of guys will fill their system up and then purge it to get any of the debris out, any flux or stuff from soldering or just dust in the piping, you don't really want to get those in your pumps and in your valves, so filtering is a good idea, regardless, and this filling station comes with a filter. Okay, our drainback tanks-- both of collectors the TitanPower and the TitanThermoPower can be used with drainbacks, and we have-- there is more and more interest with drainbacks these days, so we have a nice drainback tank that comes out of-- it's made in America, and there is internal coils, or no coil, whichever you prefer, if your gonna do a retro fit or build new, that will determine. Your sales rep can help you figure out which tank is best for you, but these are as good as they can and very easily tied into our collectors. For those of you who don't know too much about drainbacks, we will be doing a webinar on drainbacks within the next month, so please stay tuned for that webinar. Drainbacks are becoming more and more popular, and we're going to talk about the considerations of those. Our heat exchangers are coined XMaxx. X as in accessories, and so heat exchangers are an accessory to the SunMaxx brand and we coin them XMaxx. So generally we have 3 types: the XMaxx brazed plates the XMaxx Air to Water and the XMaxx Shell n Tube. Subsequently, their sku's are XMaxx BP, XMaxx AW and XMaxx ST. Now for more questions and product brochures, please contact your sales rep, and you can get these right off. You can also access all these product brochures at SunMaxxSolar.com as well. And another heat exchanger that some of you might be familiar with is the Wand, this fits inside of an existing domestic hot water tank. As you can see, you have the supply and return from the solar loop which is inside of a double walled heat exchanger, and the hot water supply which is only reduced by about 15-20 % flow, comes up out of this port and then that connects to your shower or your hot water load. These wands are very effective at stabilizing the stratifications inside of a storage tank. They are cost effective if nobody has room for an external tank or pre-heat tank and all they want to do is tie a collector with a pump into their existing tank, this is a perfect solution, the XMaxx-Wand. It does also come with OG-300 certificate. The heat dumps-- the SunMaxx heat dumps-- these are the non-pressurized heat dumps. Some of you may have seen these and noticed them as being-- changed color. They have gone through a little different design. There's also this large one on the top. This is used for more larger systems, commercial projects. And these have been coined as the SPOC - the self-pressurizing over-temperature canister. What we call them SunMaxx heat dump BB, as in Barry Butler. Okay, any questions you have on these, I'd be happy to help you out with more outside of this webinar. And additionally we have the pool heaters, our FAFCO brand pool heaters are very easy to install. Probably the solution for anyone who is looking to heat their pool in the summer time, this is the solution for them, please ask your sales rep for more information about our pool heaters, and our various components that come with the pool heaters. And lastly GoodMaxx. GoodMaxx is our brand of PV Panels. We have both 180 and 220 watts. Each of them come with a 10, a 12, or 30 year warranty. Additionally there is a tolerance of +5 watts that we can guarantee, and a very high efficiency rating upwards of 15% under certain conditions. And the GoodMaxx comes in 180 and 220 watts, so please ask your-- additionally the Good Maxx comes with a ConnectMaxx mounting hardware that can be pre-assembled and lifted onsite pre-engineered and pre-designed, so GoodMaxx is the entire package with inverters, charge controllers, and mounting hardware. Okay, I've gone over 8 minutes, I started a couple of minutes late so I don't feel too bad, but I would like to end this formally, and that way I can keep any of our future listeners interested. Thanks again, and I hope you all have a sunny day. Looks like we're under some severe rain here in Upstate New York and it's likely to continue for the next couple days, so I hope you all have some sun somewhere, wherever you are. Have a great day. Take care.

Solar Thermal Site Survey 8.16.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR THERMAL SITE SURVEY Date : 08/16/2010 Solar Thermal Site Survey: This is an other addition of our sunmaxx solar webinar series, Today we are going to talk about Solar Thermal Site Surveys as well as T*SOL, later on the program shared with our product manager will discuss how to properly design and size the system using T*SOL. So the first half-hour I will talk about site surveys I'd like to remind everyone that I more welcome to ask questions in the chat box and I will try my best to answer them right away. Ok Well, What I like to discuss this morning around this afternoon is how to properly survey a project that is lot of considerations they have to be made, many of them are fairly consistent from ever from with one project to another and some are relatively unique but its important you understand all the considerations okay anywhere any questions, here we go, one of the first things you have to do is determine the solar potential of your client and that should be done before you give them any indication of what your system can perform how well it can perform and there are many ways to analyzes the solar potential and I will talk about those little bit but that's got to be your number one priority right off the bat is what type of solar potential do they have chances are using a thermal collectors of today whether flat platter or aqudity two. I personally run across very very few rooftops that has a minimal solar potential , even you know, some that are half shaded or 75% shaded will still yield a decent amount of solar energy, so it's not that you wanted to disclude anyone from using solar but you have to accurately assess their solar potential so we can figure out exactly what a system can do for them. because as you may know already it's all about expectations. Few properly survey a system or a project is starts with solar potential and you really shouldn't say anything to the client regarding solar potential until that it's been accomplished. Another consideration site surveys is in our experience is that when they are done professionally they become a very intercrop part of the sales process and so it starts out as being well dressed and well spoken but it's not opportunity for you or your sales rep for your engineer, designer to accomplish much of the sales process as you walk around the home whether the wood building it up on the roof or as the key questions the clients can very easily assess your knowledge. So be cautious of sending someone to do a site survey just for the purpose. So site surveys have dual purposes or triple purposes and not the least of which is actually the most important is to gain a sale and by assessing the project in a very professional manner with someone who is knowledgeable and who can also design a system on the spot determine solar potential, the client is going to be much more confident your ability and another consideration to make it easier sunmaxx developed prepackaged kits and leave practice of always thinking so prepackaged kits right off the bat. So for just about every system we have seen leave developer prepackaged kits, another not to say that those prepackaged kits campy customizable but it's very important that you first look at the prepackaged kit options and then the last point I would like to say in this introduction is that you should never overstate the system's ability, like I said briefly that it’s all about expectations. So you want to be very conservative in your estimates early on. So that it gives the system and ability and opportunity over performed and lot of your future job sources the ability of your other company will rely on our referrals. So any customer that is disappointed in their system, from our experience, disappointment lies in their expectations. So we set expectations properly accurately the beginning then you can set yourself up for success that is very very important. We learnt from our mistakes of early on that over emphasizing the system ability will inevitably lead to disappointed in performance. Now one of the first thing you should do before you can do a site surveys qualify your leads. You can spend a considerable amount of time, chasing leads around, doing site surveys, only to find that those leads have really had the interest begin with or that you know after the proposals done the financials are working out in the 8 to 10 year payback and other some cases whether financially it doesn't just exclusively financially doesn't make a lot of sense. So it’s very important for you to determine which of the site surveys you're going to fall through with. Another question is, are you going to offer free site surveys, we should allow this lot of success in trade shows and at public events where companies that offer free site surveys, will have an number of leads to fall through it, that's a good thing but it's also report prioritize those leads and qualified them, in qualifying leads for site surveys you want to first determine their hot water load and be sure that they have a hot water load , hot water loadss compared to heating loads , hot water loads will afford the client much better payback in a higher return. So if you have 26 surveys you want to take a look and identify those the first of the large hot water load and secondly the ones that have a consistent look throughout the year. lastly if you can determine the status time those that are paying a premium rate for instance if someone is using natural gas versus electricity. the client is using electricity largely have a much better payback. so you can save yourself a lot of time I think, by qualifying your leads in determining which ones will percent of the best financials after the site survey. I have listed a few of those quotations in order of these are essentially the low hanging fruits of the solar thermal market large water load a consistent usage throughout the year relatively consistent anyway and those that pay a premium rate from descending order would be fossil fuel and number two diesel, electricity, propane and natural gas, so the best feedback sure are those clients are using fuel oil, second would be electricity then propane and natural gas. it's very important you do your background information, in other words, you should really try to do your homework before you go to the site survey. There's many things you can learn from your client without actually going to the house. I listed some bullets that goal will give you little bit of detail and if there's ways you can find and determine how water usage and their low profile you can come into the site survey with relatively decent amount of knowledge that would eventually lead to more confidence in your client, for instance, looking at the water usage, programs such as retscreen will help you determine how water usage indirectly through the hotels, llaundromats, restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and different manufacturing and the like.So you can get relatively good idea of how water usage before you even step foot on the property. Another thing you'd want to try to do for commercial properties in particular it get over the superintendent or the head of maintenance that person is going to give you access to places that before you do an official meeting or our proposal you wanted to be sure every these opportunities lined up. So you can see the weather skin on the roof , couple of the tools you can use, as mentioned here roof ray, you can go to roofray.com this is a site that allows you to measure and determine solar potential of most any roof, is certainly in North America and have seen several South American, I can speak for the ability to look at a roof and in the Middle East, but roofray.com is simply plug in the address very similar to Google Earth, might use the same software but more importantly it allows you to plot out the roof and determine the size of the roof, so that before you go to the site surveys you already have 50% of that solar potential done. Next thing you want to find out ahead of time as possible is what type of boilers do they used and what type of fuel and how much they pay for that fuel. This helps you qualify those. Another important point to make is, in the end after the site surveys done and your proposals done, you really have to build communicate with the person who is going to make the decision. Now with residential clients is very easy, because you know that the husband or wife and sometimes unfortunate enough they'll both make that decision but often there is board or someone who is going to be responsible for making the ultimate decision. You should do some background research to find out who that person is so that ultimately you can be in front of them and convince them directly. Other thing to learn ahead of time is Francis organization has some existing initiatives that you can piggyback the solar thermal upgrade with this part of capital improvement, do they intend to do any energy upgrades, replacing boilers or replacing chillers will be doing the roof or any other capitol projects. This again is just as head is as homework ahead of time. So you can come into it with some well-informed suggestions with regard to capitol projects, you can bring the cost of your system laid down by including into an existing upgrade. Also once you identify the decision-makers, what is it that really drives the decisions are they green minded, are they really just looking for to save money, are they looking for tax rid off, are they image-conscious and they have clients in hotels or apartment buildings. Today they intend to promote their building as being green and energy smart. another thing that you can do ahead of time is to being contacted with sunmaxx rep, let them know that you planned to do the site survey for particular job in and they might be able to offer some suggestions or similar systems that we've recently designed and sold and be sure you have your pricing all figured out ahead of time because it does help to offer clients ballpark figures. You want to be very careful in a conservative in that but many people like to you know as part of a second stage qualification. many people like to have an idea of what a system might cost them and so I highly recommended that you have your price list, not necessarily memorized but you know what ballpark you will be working within, what overhead and margins you'd expect and also may be the price is part of a bid. So what type of bid is, we will be bidding on an old job or is it just commercial but you should know what type of bid and also for larger systems , some homework ahead a time is identified, some bonding capacity, any requirements in terms of insurance and what type of bond you need to hold case of this is also that needs to be done ahead of time if possible of that gives you the more professional parents as you begin to meet with them face-to-face doing a site survey you obviously done your homework and will go along ways to purchase sales cycle. So a proper site surveys is very important, I have listed only really 5 reasons why proper site surveys is important but there's many more, simply for all solar thermal systems must achieve 50% solar fraction and really the only way to determine that solar fraction is to do a proper site survey. Site surveys don't always require on-site. They can be done using virtual methods and indirect load calculations but most often site surveys will need to be able to determine the load so that solar fraction can be assessed. Another reason that proper site surveys are important is that clients especially the ones early on many of your early clients are typically the ones that are more well-informed than others and the well-informed clients need to feel confident that all the considerations have been made. It also gives you an ability to demonstrate your knowledge as you do the site survey look at the site survey as an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and like I said before, it's a very important part of the sales cycle, whether it’s on phone or face-to-face, it's important that they understand, how knowledgeable and passionate you are. If they see that you are, you may be all very knowledgeable but perhaps you don't have the passion that’s going to obviously reflect poorly on your business, but you wouldn't be listening to this if you're passionate already, I would imagined such as myself. also remembers many ways to size and design systems and they properly survey project will give the client the best fit, whether it's you go with your option is flat plates, evacuated tubes, still mount, flush mount, train back, close loop. There is many ways it is important that you have a host of methods that you can install these. The most successful installers will be the ones that has the largest degree of variability I guess in their systems, so that you can pick from your magic at the system that suits their situation the best. In other way to do that is with proper site survey and I will leave you with this last point on the slide is that site surveys will properly size systems and that the filling the rooftop is not the best solution and one thing that we found when you suggest that a smaller system is better, it immediately indicates to the client figure out for their benefit as well as your own. obviously you make more money on a bigger system but it is important for the client to know that bigger systems are not always better in your recommendation is that they have the best system and not the biggest system. Any questions at this point. On-site semi-exterior considerations that must be made in determining your solar potential are the first two bullets; obviously the size but also the orientation which direction does the roof phase and will this orientation of the existing roof hindered the aesthetic appeal. so it's important to know that you know if you feel the roof is facing/the slope is facing north west or south east or it's not a dealbreaker but that's a consideration we need to use to determine the potential of the roof and from that then will decide whether it’s going to be better for you too, cantilever the collectors are creating compound angle, flush mount because one of the most important things in sustainability of your business is the aesthetic appeal of your systems. So by knowing the correct orientation of the roof, we can take that into account in terms of the performance. So you better off may trying to make the collectors the roof statically rather than a big compound angles and still mount of self-pitched roof, you want to use compass, if you don't have the other tools to determine and other one is accessibility how easy is it to be for you to if you need to get truck or ladder or forklift or cherry picker whatever it’s going to take how accessible is this rooftop to getting the equipment on there and another any structural hindrances like chimneys or dormers identifying where shadowing is not only done by trees and houses but parts of the roof can provide shading as well in terms of obstructions. Can you go down the chase ways either chase ways you can follow or you go down on the side of the house, if you go down the side of the house and you have exterior piping, how will look, what you can do to create that aesthetic appeal with exterior piping in terms of chase ways how accessible it will be for you to run piping all the way down, obviously if there's a way for you to go inside the house, ultimately you will have a higher performing system and it will cost less but exterior piping has been done of the fashionably I guess and I've seen many that look way well and in hiding in cursor downspouts or a wrapped in a corner of the house. So you have to determine how you're going to, you have to need a picture in your head and use your imagination, how will this look on the roof, how will you oriented on the roof, how you will run the piping down. Another thing is wind load. Different places in the country would have different wind velocities and we have to be sure that the collectors in this and the type of mounting will accommodate the wind. In some cases where we would recommend flat plates based on a budget and performance the deal breaker was the fact that the wind load would be too high to mount these. So you have to be prepared even though your clients might prefer flat plates and flat plates are better you should consider the fact that you know mount these up of to the roof this is excluding the fresh mount, mounting them up of the roof will increase wind load and every minutes right now so far has had different quotes, reference scenario little town here $25 building permit and a one-page of application will get the job started and then the court will come around and take a quick look at the system and typically sign off if you've met certain small set of guidelines in other cases you just an hour away the city officials have determined that of their going to make it very difficult to install anything on the roof and some extra pair to help you with all the specifications that you need in order to meet these codes. Unfortunately we don't have the nationwide database of all municipal codes but we can help you with the federal quotes. Also if they have a white roof or highly reflective roof that needs to be noted for our search survey TSOL reports that we can include a reflectivity in the performance. We've seen anywhere from 10 to 25% increase in performance based on different reflectivity is of roof structures and see light-colored roof is going to increase the performance of evacuated tubes, won’t do much at all for flat plates but if you go with evacuated tubes reflectivity will be played portal additionally can you increase the reflective, even if they have black asphalt of architectural shingles, can you increased reflectively by applying a roof made below the collectors or some foil backed foam under the collectors and the client is going to do this. I can say this much that if with a flush mount evacuated tube system, we've seen performance of 17% simply by claiming the roof would surely williams highly reflective roofing. Also how old this roof, is there an existing warranty that will need to be re-warranted and they plan to replace the roof anytime soon, if so can we include the solar thermal system with that endeavor and how far away is the boiler, what the distance that we need to travel with these pipes to get to where we need to go and that might affect the placement of the collectors on the roof is a shorter savage the better in terms of heat loss to the system. Now it's important if you follow scripted assessment for your site, you can go with a scratch pad and could board and ask questions in a random manner and that would probably be fine but goes back to original being professional and having homework. We highly suggest that you have a scripted assessment and liked to show you one for example right now. This is our, I am going to show you my computer screen here and it will take a second. Now if you take a look at the Sumaxx survey form, we have several different pieces of information that need to be assessed on some situations you find that this point is irrelevant and you can specify but it's you have all these points covered, obviously the location is a public or a private, the type of building, it is a nursing home, resident, hospital, workshop, quickly check that off and the one of the most important things is determine the low profile which includes the scheduled throughout the year, throughout the week is a five day system or five day occupancy, or they all week long so they goes back to our original qualification of having customers at consistent loads and their hot water consumption on workdays and Saturdays Sundays holidays. We want to know what their low-profile is, not only for the day but also throughout the entire year, determining the water consumption throughout the year that is their yearly low-profile will help us properly size the system, determining low profiles for daily use without the determine the size and storage tank, So this allows you to determine what percentage of their load is used during different months of the year and Franciscekey resorts so water park is going to have in inverse relationship in their water usage. So we want to be able to size of the system that doesn't exceed 100% , those typically the systems are given as the best payback not always the case but often we can build a system that rarely if ever exceeds 100% percent than the system utilization will be much higher. I don’t have time to go through this entire site survey form but I would like to show you point attention to the fact that it's highly scripted and it comes with experience of from the European market that we've adopted by looking at the most important information that we need to gather in order to run a T*SOL report. Summary, back to the to the PowerPoint quickly this site survey form is available to you through your deal around and just one second will get right back to the PowerPoint. The next thing you have to do, once you've done the site surveys, submit a quote request form, the quote request form that you are going to access through your login information as a dealer if you don't have login information please contact your Europe sunmaxx representatives in the picture to get you login. So you can just show up quote request form with the information you done from a site survey and engineering department will help you size design a system of thinking first to the prepackaged kits and then lastly we would look at a customized solution. One of the important thing about quote request form is decreases your liability, we would like to take liable. We are liable for the systems that you're going to be installing. So it's important that we have input in size and design solar faction of that system said also helps you because the less liable you are the better it is, the quote request form is for you. you will be submitting a quote request form to us and will help you design the systems, looking like this at first at the prepackaged kits and then customized solution and like I said that if we size it properly, it can reduce your liability and every time that you would like a quote from us, will see quote request form so that we have ways to track and see that and modify the type of systems that you have been requesting. It helps us to make a more customized service with your relationship. Once you get that quote where we will submit a quote to you at your cost. We give you manufacture suggested prices but those margin will be entirely up to use, so as a dealer you will receive the dealer pricing in your quote, a site survey is required the use of submitting in order to do it properly assesses solar potential, got to use one or two, these two that are shown or are just two of the options but I found also an application that will accomplish mostly with these two will, solar pathfinder is the most commonly used in, many of you might be familiar with this. We would probably have a webinar in the near future on the use of the solar Pathfinder. But for now you can go to www.solarpathfinder.com, there are several videos and tutorials that walk you through, Solmetric Suneye is priced in for or five times more than solar Pathfinder. But it becomes highly technical allows you to give a much more instant feedback and original GPS Lincoln and all that. But it’s very important they use instrument rather than your own intuition regarding the path of the sun front here. Now, when it comes to interior considerations, we have to see the boiler room, you can look at the age of the boiler that can help us determining the efficiency of the boiler. And if it's true for any particular upgrades, the size of the boiler, also remember that the size of the boiler is typically designed for design days that is the coldest time of the year, boilers will indicate, how are you such but it's it becomes difficult to determine how our usage based only on the size of the boiler because they are most often oversized, that is, the result of oil you know fuel companies selling you bigger boilers because bigger boilers use more energy , more energy use the more money they make. We also need to know piping diameter for cold water supply. how water feeds that allows to directly determine the flow rates. We want to built to accommodate the maximum flow rate specially preheat solar water tank, you also need to assess whether there's room for storage, the special for Cumby systems that require significant amount of space to store the energy. Hot water systems take up much less room in fact week in tirade into the existing structure cannot think of any room of the two better get a look if there is room and client is okay with that you're better off always gone with preheat tank So it your priority is to find a place for preheat tank if that's not possible then you can use existing tank can you get those tanks inside the house, can you get even downstairs, how, why do the doors, is there any temperature maintains, how high is the ceiling, with height of the tank fit, is there any existing storage place you can use that already have a storage tanks and where will we put the valves , another valves you can argue corporate do you have to install new valves, so it's important to get a little drawing , scan then send it to your dealer around and sharing can help you make the most of what they are to have in place looking of. I have come to the conclusion of the site survey webinar I would like to thank every attention and remind you that we're always available for questions. So again thank you for your attention.

Solar Hot Water System Sizing 7.6.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR HOT WATER SYSTEM SIZING Date: 07/06/2010 Well, good afternoon. I would like to welcome everybody to our 6th edition of the SunMaxx Solar product webinar series. Today I want to talk about system sizing. We’d like to do this once a week and we try to keep the conversations to a half an hour, so I will end this at 12:30, and after which, anybody would like to have any questions please feel free. [okay, I’m going to have to start over with my audio, it doesn’t appear as if my audio is working, ok well, I got-- thanks Tony, I appreciate the feedback. I’m going to continue to talk -- Okay] So, what I’d like to cover today is how to properly size a solar thermal system because as you know, a properly sized solar system --our main goal is to try to get the most out of the collectors, and by keeping that operating temperature low, we get a higher collector efficiency, which I will describe in more detail a little bit later on. As well as maximizing solar efficiency, we want to try to extend the solar day, and in cases where we can start the day earlier, or end the day later, we end up getting a considerable amount more BTUs over the course of the year. I’d like to welcome everybody now that is now joining. And one of the most important things to system longevity is not overheating the system, preserving the glycol if its glycol, or if it’s a drainback system, we want to be able to not overheat the system, not over heat the pipes, not overheat the pump, not overheat the exchangers, and certainly not overheat the collectors. So, these can be accomplished with properly sized system. Additionally we want to try to meet the requirement. So if our temperature requirement is 120, we don’t really want to exceed that by more than 20%. The reason is, the higher the temperature of the storage tank, the lower the utilization of the system. So if we can target our temperature at 120, we might exceed that by 20-24, we might go up to 140-150, but we don’t really have any use for water at 170. So if we are -- if our tank is at 170, then the storage volume is probably not been considered. And then the-- probably the most important among all of these is that we've got to be able to present the best return to our clients, all right. So a large system that fills the roof isn't always the best return. So we have to be realistic about what this system will produce, and try to present to our clients a system that gives them best return, and often times that is a smaller system, okay. So I'll go through a couple rules of thumb. I will be redundant because there are some points that are more important than others. If you have any questions, I'll remind you to please feel free to type any questions in the chat box so I can see them, and I tend to respond immediately, okay. All right, so a few things that we have to consider, first, is probably the roof space. Generally that's going to be the limiting factor in system size. Probably 70% of the time, the roof space is never enough to get more than 40-50% solar fraction anyway. And also, when we are sizing systems, we size them based on the square foot of collector. Not how many collectors there are, rather it's the square footage of collector surface, okay. And when you do this per--, you have to be clear whether you are talking about gross area, or aperture area. Some, for instance SRCC will give you the BTU output for collector based on gross area. So either way, just be sure you know what you are talking about in terms of absorber area or gross area, nevertheless we're gonna size these systems based on square foot, not based on number of collectors, okay. Another consideration, just to bring it up early, is, for those of you who have been through the training, you know that we try to size up our storage tanks at about 2 to 3 gallons per square foot. I wrote 2 there, but it's really 1 square foot, whether it's flat plate or evacuated tube. Now, I will talk a little more about the difference between 2 square foot vs. 3 square foot a little bit later, but generally it's dependent on the temperature requirement. Storage space in terms of your solar thermal storage tank will be really dependent on the temperature requirement. Another thing when it comes to sizing the system is that, for residential systems, we really don't want to go more than 150 feet away, basically because of pressure drop and velocity. Another very important point, as you'll understand as we move through the next half hour, is that the higher the solar fraction, the lower the total system efficiency. This is generally the case that as we approach 85 and 90% solar fraction, we end up using fewer of those total BTUs that we produced. So system efficiency is a function of the total number of BTU's that strike our collector vs. those that we actually consume in our storage tank. And the higher that solar fraction is that we are trying to achieve the lower the total system efficiency. If we can get our system efficiency, total system efficiency, between 30-50%, that's actually a pretty good efficiency and TSOL report which I will show you later will help us determine those efficiencies. So we're shooting for the intercept between the highest solar fraction and the highest efficiency. And that goes right along the same lines as, if we're-- the higher solar fraction of 95% may have a system efficiency of 12%, but we can get double the efficiency with --or smaller solar fraction which means higher rate of return with a higher fraction. Okay, another point that we need to know is the load profiles. We have to understand that peak consumptions during the day, the daily load profile. This will help us size up our storage tanks. So if I know that I'm consuming most of my BTUs at the same time that I'm producing most of my BTUs, then I'm gonna have a much, much smaller storage tank, and in some cases I won't have a storage tank at all. Now, in terms of the seasonal load profile, this will help us determine system size. So over the course of the year, does that BTU load change/vary from one season to the next, and how does that seasonal load profile compare with our seasonal production profile. As often times these two points, a daily and seasonal load profiles are not readily available. But when you do have access to the load profiles, particularly the daily load profile, it really helps us understand the total system size -- storage tank size. Another consideration is, the summer time-- the amount of solar radiation often is 2 to 3 times greater than it is in the wintertime. So if we have a low load in the summer and a high load in the winter, then what's gonna happen in the summer time, we're gonna produce -- we might produce 4 times than what we need. So we really have to look at our summer time insolation, to determine the maximum system size, we'll do that a little bit later. Now we can also affect that system efficiency for summertime by increasing the incident angle. So by standing our collectors upright, we decrease the total production of the collectors in the summertime, which gives us a greater amount of BTUs in the wintertime, and fewer--. So basically we can compensate for that higher insolation level by increasing our incident angle. I've got a question here, what do you mean by efficiency? Well efficiency is really a function of the total number of BTUs from the solar insolation that strikes the collectors, relative to the number of BTU's that we produce that we actually consume, okay. So, its efficiency of the system is not only efficiency of the collectors but it's also the utilization of the system. Utilization being how many BTUs we product vs. how many BTUs we consume. And that's-- collector efficiency is a function of the insolation that strikes the collectors relative to the temperature of the collectors and the ambient temperature. I'll get into more of that in just a bit. Okay, Some guidelines for domestic hot water. I'll try to keep it very simple. For small residential systems, which is the largest market in the United States right now, we recommend 10 sq. ft. of collector per person, okay. Now I wrote in parenthesis there 52% solar fraction (SF) solar fraction. That is really designed for Syracuse, New York, one of the places in the country that gives us the least amount of insolation. So following that guideline, 10 sq. ft. of collector per person for Syracuse New York -- if you live anywhere outside of the Southern tier, or central New York, you're probably gonna get more insolation than us which will give you a higher solar fraction. Okay, to be specific, in terms of your solar fraction, your gonna look to your SunMaxx representative, and they'll give you a specific program-- analysis-- TSOL report, that will give you your solar fraction for your particular area. But you can guarantee that the federal incentive, which requires 50% solar fraction, if you go with this 10 foot of collector per person, then that's designed for Syracuse, New York which has a very low insolation level. We can also look at the total hot water bill-- I'm sorry, the utilities bill, for heat and hot water, and typically domestic hot water is 30% of that, so we can indirectly determine the number of BTUs consumed by those individuals for hot water if we understand that they're household fuel built. Another way to look at is that generally the American average is 20 gallons per person. Now that's only for the first 2 people, okay. The third person, they consume 15 gallons, and the forth person is 10 gallons. So we have a D rating of the usage per person per day. This is the American average, all right. Now for large commercial domestic hot water systems, or even large residential systems, we can calculate the BTU load per day if we know the gallons. So the delta G that I am referring to is the difference between your max and the min. What is the required temperature minus the temperature of the incoming ground water? That gives us our gradient, our delta g. How much do we want to see the temperature rise by? Every degree requires 8.3 BTUs per gallon, okay. So I can calculate the BTU load by looking at the delta G, which is the difference between max and min, multiply that by total gallons and I multiply that again by 8.3, that gives me the BTUs per day. 8.3 incidently, is the number of BTUs that it takes to heat one gallon, one degree. Or, it's the amount of 1 BTU is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 pound of water, 1 degree, and there's 8.33 pounds to a gallon. Okay, now we have to determine what the BTU output is per square foot of collector. And I'll go through a little exercise is a minute to show you how we do that. And typically we look at the efficiency, average efficiency of our SunMaxx collectors is 73%, that's at a very low or 0 delta T, that efficiency is gonna change periodically throughout the year, so it's very difficult for us to calculate exactly the production per day without using software or taking our time and methodically going through the logarithms to determine the change in efficiency relative to the insolation. And then what we want to do is fine what solar fraction is most suitable. And by most suitable I mean, which one is gonna accommodate the roof space that's available, the storage space that's available, and the budget that's available. So we-- even though they might have 100,000 dollars for a solar thermal system, a smaller system might give them a better return. Okay, so you have to remember that your business is going to be referral driven, and you want your customers to reap the reward financially as much as possible. So sometimes a smaller system is better. Okay, one rule of thumb, and remember, I told you I was gonna be a little redundant because some are very important, the higher the temperature requirement, the lower the total utilization, okay. So whenever we can lower the temperature requirement, you get more out of the solar. For instance, if I have a solar thermal system and my hot water tank is set at 120, and I've got two flat-- I've got a 42 square feet of collector. Well I can increase the utilization of my solar thermal by lowering the temperature requirement of that storage tank down to 115. Most people take showers at 104 to 107 anyway, and in many cases, hot water, dish water - dishwashers have their own little heating element to bring the temperature of the water up. So if we can lower the temperature requirement, you're gonna get more out of the solar thermal systems. Okay, and again, a high solar fraction equals a lower system efficiency, and we never want it to exceed 100%. So if we look at the June's data, I wanna look at June's load, and it might be low, but the insolation is very high, so I really have to set my maximum number for June. If I can meet 100% of June, knowing that I'm not going to go over 100%, then I can determine the total solar fraction by looking at that maximum square footage that I've determined to be less than 100% in June, and find the most suitable solar fraction. And we'll do that in just a few minutes. Okay, we have to a also understand the consumption vs. production, okay. So insolation varies from day to day, but we have to try to accommodate the varying insolation levels so that we can meet a pretty good load each day. Whether we meet 30% of the load or 90% of the load, we have to take into consideration the changes in insolation not only seasonally, but daily. And from our experience, the solar fractions that are giving us the greatest return are those that are falling between 30 to 60%. So one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to go tell the client you're gonna replace their existing fuel source, or you're going to reduce their hot water bill by 95-100%. There's very rarely does that happen, and when it does happen, they've spent more money than they needed to, so we want-- have to play it safe this early in the industry and we wanna make sure that our clients are getting their money back from these systems and those that are getting the most money back are the ones that have the high hot water load, low temperature requirement, and have had systems designed for 30 to 60% of their solar fraction. Okay, and again, we can determine the storage volume required, by looking at the amount of BTUs that can actually be stored in one gallon of water. So if I have a useable BTU temperature of 120 degrees, anything above that, I can very easily calculate how many gallons it's gonna take to store a certain number of BTUs, because I know that each gallon per degree can store 8.3 BTUs . Okay, for sizing and design, first we have to determine total BTU load per day. And this may change daily, it may change seasonally, but we have to get an average. We have to know what that total BTU load is. Once we do that, then it's important for us to understand the load profile seasonally and daily. If you remember from earlier, not quite 15 minutes ago, I described the importance of seasonal load profile and that is for system size, and the importance of daily load profile is for storage tank size, okay. Now you can-- one of the biggest mistakes you can make is not understanding the solar potential, okay. The solar potential -- what we really need to know is available roof space, and the insolation that's gonna strike that roof. So when it comes to using a roofray.com, or Google earth, and zooming down onto a roof top, you're getting a picture of that roof. You might now see any shading, it looks like its got full sun, but it can be really misleading. So you really have to use some type of a tool, an instrument, particularly a solar instrument to determine solar potential. Solar Pathfinder, Solmetric SunEye, those are two very easy readily available instruments. The Pathfinder is about 300 dollars. You can get that right from your SunMaxx rep, or a Solmetric SunEye, those I've heard are in the 1600 - 1700 dollar range, but you've gotta determine the solar potential on the roof, and that's our starting point. RETScreen is a free software, I'll show you a little bit later, that will help us determine the insolation values for different regions of the world, that might now get very specific to a small town in America, but for most states, there are several different cities to choose from that will be very close. So we have to understand, the roof potential and the insolation, both of which you can find from either going on site using a Solar Pathfinder, and then online using a RETScreen for your insolation data. From that we have to calculate instantaneous collector efficiency, although you may know that the thermal collectors operate at 73 to 75% efficiency, that changes relative to the incoming temperature, it also changes relative to the ambient temperature. So in order for us to determine total system output, instantaneous collector efficiency really has to be calculated on a day by day basis. It can be very belaboring. Luckily we use some software that does all the calculations for us, and then we need to know production vs. consumption and from that then we're gonna determine the flow rate and storage size, and what type of heat exchange that we're gonna use. Heat exchangers, by the way, will be another webinar in the very near future, but there's a lot of things we can do to increase the system performance by choosing the right and most appropriate heat exchanger. So, before we begin to size, we have to know what the functionality of the collectors are that we've chosen, so I'm gonna show you a picture of an SRCC certificate, and I guess I need to apologize for those of you if this is unreadable. You can visit solar-rating.org. Solar Rating is the location where all the SRCC certificates are located online through SRCC. So if you do a web search SRCC, you'll come to this website. And you can pull up the certificates, and I encourage you to do that. And a couple of things you want to pay particular attention to, again I see something a little different on my screen, it's not visible, but you might be able to see this. Things you want to look at when you're sizing up the collectors are the slope. Okay, one is the slope. So BTUs per hour per foot per degree basically tells the losses in efficiency relative to the Ti minus Ta which is this category right over here. Categories A, B, C, D, and E are 5 different categories basically representing climactic conditions, so for instance, the Ti minus Ta of 144 degrees would be in category E. Okay, under those conditions it says mildly cloudy, these collectors are going to produce 1.3-- basically 1300 BTUs per panel per day. Okay, so the two most important things to look at when you see these--when you're looking at the certificates, are the Y intercept, this Y intercept is our collector efficiency at 0 Delta T, and I'll show you a graph in just a moment, and also the slope. The slope is the degree to which the collector loses efficiency based on the Ti minus Ta, or the ambient temperature vs. inlet temperature. Okay, so these different categories are climactic categories, and clear, mildly and cloudy represent 3 different levels of insolation, 2000, 1500 and 1000 BTUs per foot squared per day. Okay, so when the collectors are measured-- analyzed through SRCC and performance tested, they are-- determining the collector efficiency, which on the certificate is called the Y intercept, and they do that by looking at the inlet fluid parameter. The inlet fluid parameter is basically the inlet temperature, the temperature coming into the collector minus the ambient temperature. Okay, so whatever the ambient temperature is subtract that from the inlet temperature, and then it's divided by i. i is the total solar insolation that strikes the collectors, okay, and that's per foot. So we don't need to know the total for the collector, because it's divided by-- per square foot of the collector, all right. So if we look at the graph here on the right hand side, the collector efficiency is the function of the inlet fluid parameter. The inlet fluid parameter, Ti minus Ti divided by i times this-- multiply it here, this is the slope from SRCC, so we multiply the inlet fluid parameter times the slope, and it gives us the efficiency. If we work our way over to the Y axis, this will tell us the Y intercept, okay. So for example, of an inlet parameter of .6, the efficiency of the flat plate is 24%. If we are looking at the inlet fluid parameter of .4, the efficiency of both flat plate and evacuated tubes are the same. So it's very important to understand what determines this inlet fluid parameter, because inlet fluid parameter is gonna affect our performance more than anything. Well, there is two things that determine inlet fluid parameter. The ambient temperature, and the collector inlet temperature, all right. Which of those two do you have anything to do with? Well, the only way you can affect your ambient temperature is to move south, which in most cases can't happen. The second thing you can do is lower your temperature requirement so that inlet temperature is basically a function of your storage temperature of your requirement. So the lower that is, the lower your inlet fluid parameter, which gives you a higher efficiency, okay. So these are things that we need to consider before we can determine the system size. Okay, so this is another graph showing you how we determine the inlet fluid parameter. We've got the Y intercept is the location where this slope crosses the Y. So if your inlet fluid parameter for example is .7, .7 will give us an efficiency of 20%. So obviously as I said before, the best way that we can increase the efficiency of the collectors is to lower that inlet temperature. Lowering that inlet temperature by -- by lowering the temperature requirement, will give us a higher efficiency, which will ultimately give us a better payback. Okay, so to determine the number of square foot of collector. First thing we need to do is find that maximum square footage of collector is, and remember we don't wanna exceed 100%. Then we have to determine what the total BTU load per day is and divide that by our peak production, okay. I'm going to run through an example in just a moment that illustrates this. So once we have our total BTU load per day, okay, which we used our delta G times 8.3 times a gallons. I have to divide that by their peak production per day that'll give me the maximum number of square feet. Once I have the maximum number of square feet I have to find out what the best solar fraction is. The best solar fraction is the one that never exceeds 100%, because, remember the more BTUs I produce that I don't consume, the more that system is gonna cost, okay. So I want to try to bring the cost down as much as possible, and I do that by consuming every BTU. So for step 4, I have to find the maximum number of square foot, which I did in Step 2, and multiply that by the average output. Okay, that is using insolation values, and the average efficiency of the collectors which will give me the average total production. Once I have the average total production, then I divide the average total production by the total BTU load per day and that will give me the recommended solar fraction so that I do not exceed 100% in June, okay. Now, this is something that you can potentially go to your client with to give them a preliminary proposal, and say, yeah it looks like we can do about 60% of your solar fraction, whatever. To be much more professional, this would be a good chance for your to turn to your SunMaxx rep so they can print out a-- or actually I send you a copy of a Tsol report that then you can present to your client which gives them a much more specific solar fraction in detailed analysis. Okay. Now here's a sizing example I can run through you real quick. For example we have 100 gallons per day water consumption, okay. Actually 1000 gallons per day. Water consumption is 1000 per day. Our delta G, our rise in temperature is the difference between max and min., and that's 65 degrees. And our BTU load per day is 65 degrees times 8.33 times 1000 which is 541,450 okay. And then I need to find out what the average insolation per day is so I use RETScreen, and I found 4.62 kilowatt hours per meters squared per day. In order to convert that to BTUs I multiply by 317 which gives me 1465 BTU's of average insolation per day. Now to determine my BTU output, I got to multiply the average insolation which is 1465 times the collector efficiency. So using the parameters that I showed you on the previous slide, in determining the collector efficiency, I've calculated the average efficiency of 66%. So I multiply 1465 by .66 and it gives me 966 BTUs per day per foot squared of collector. Now I need to find out the peak insolation. And I found that to be 6.3 Kilowatt hours, using RETScreen. Multiply that by the converting number of 317.1, gives me 1997.73 BTUs per foot square per day. Finding the peak output, I looked at the collector efficiency, which I determined to be .66, multiply that by the peak insolation, and I get an output of 1318 BTU's. So now I take 1318, and I divide that into my total load, which is 541,450. And that tells me that in June, if I'm producing 1300 BTU's per foot squared, I can meet that load with 410 square foot of collector. All right, that gives me 100% of my June load, and ideally not a BTU more. So if I take my 410 square foot maximum, and I multiply that by the average output per tube, which is 966, that gives me an average production of 396,844 BTU's. So then I take 396,000 my average BTU production and I divide that by my average BTU load and it gives me a 73% solar fraction. So this solar fraction is pretty high. The heat demand is low. The lower the load, the lower the temperature requirement, the higher the solar fraction can be, okay. Now RETScreen is a free download. I strongly recommend using this as a tool. You can go to www.retwcreen.net and download RETScreen, or call on me or any of the sales reps to give you some simple advice on how to use this, but it's pretty user friendly, and it's a good tool to look at insolation data. It does a lot more than what you really need it to do. So for starters, if you haven't used it yet, give it a shot, it's a good encyclopedia if anything else. And then, to give you a quick little glimpse of some of the reports that you'll get from TSOL, we'll get our system schematic which will show us the collectors, the square foot of collectors, the azimuth angle, the inclination angle, give us the volume of storage, give us our traditional heat source, the load, 40 gallons per day at 120 and any heat transfer that's associated with that. It'll also give us in the course of the year, our production profile relative to our consumption profile, which is exactly what we'll need for system sizing, okay. And then it breaks down all these little components very specifically, ultimately giving us the total system solar fraction, which in the case is 45%. Okay, and lastly storage tank sizing. We really have to understand the daily load profile, so that we know how many extra BTUs are we going to consume during the day, that we won't consume-- how many will we produce that we won't consume, the time of use, what time will be peaking our consumption. Also the temperature requirement. What is the necessary temperature that we are trying to achieve? And remember that we don't want to achieve or reach more than 20% of the requirement. This allows us to increase the efficiency of our collectors. If you remember the temperature requirement is basically going to determine the Ti, the inlet temperature of the collector, and Ti is the only variable that you have any control over. So the only way that you can really increase the collector efficiency is to lower the temperature requirement which properly sized storage tanks can do that for you. And then obviously we have to look at the output of the collectors which changes throughout the year, based on the efficiency and the ambient temperature, and azimuth orientation. What I try to do, is I try to be prompt when I start, I have run 4 minutes over, I want to keep these to a half an hour so I don't take up too much of your time. I'm always more than happy to help you out with any further questions. If you have any other questions and you'd like to have them answered now, go for it and type a question right in. Otherwise I would formally end the presentation now and hopefully I can see everybody back next week. We do have a pretty good schedule set up for the next-- I think we're already set in stone through September, and-- but we're always open for suggestions. If anybody has a particular topic that they'd like us to cover. We have been saving these webinars and you can revisit the solarwebinars.com website where you are registered and you can see the past presentations. It takes a few days to get them online, but it's really my responsibility to record as I start, and so far I have recorded 3 out of 5 successfully. So go ahead and visit solarwebinars.com and you can find a copy of this presentation and others, okay. Well, I'm gonna stop recording and if anybody has any questions, I will be glad to stick around for a few minutes.

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