**This webinar had technical difficulties in the first several minutes. The webinar does begin shortly so please be patient or scroll forward to an appropriate time frame in the recording. Thank you. SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS Working with T*SOL Pro 4.5 Presented by: Sam Portnoff Date: 01/10/2011 Everything should be up and running. So, my name is Sam Portnoff, I'm an engineer here at SunMaxx Solar, and today we're going to talk about working with T*SOL Pro 4.5. T*SOL is a solar thermal simulating software that we use. So, I'm just going to go and take you through that. We do have a couple of things I want to talk about today so let's begin. Start off with, here we go, so what is T*SOL? T*SOL simulates solar thermal system production. It allows for a variety of collectors in storage tanks to be used, and multiple system variables to be adjusted. Basically what this is, is a simulating tool that the engineers use at SunMaxx to figure out what solar system we should use and size up for you. We can substitute in different collectors, we can flat plates, we can have our VHPs and see how many collectors will produce the best solar fraction and system efficiency for you, as well as changing tank sizes, flow rates, piping runs, and a variety of other variables. Actually, this allows us to figure out which system is best suited to your individual needs. What makes T*SOL unique is that it works from calculating the demand and then works backwards to figure out system efficiency and solar fraction. So what that means is that rather than saying "how much energy is the sun producing, therefore what are my collectors producing", we are working from demand rather than the efficiency. Hold on one second... is everyone able to see the PowerPoint presentation I put together? Is that available? No, huh, hold on one second. [Technical difficulties break] Okay, I think we should be back on track, so let me get back to the PowerPoint presentation. So today we're going to be talking about T*SOL 4.5. And so one of the questions I saw is why do we choose to use T*SOL? And this is based off its demand, it's ability to work from the load demand to calculate solar fraction and efficiency rather than based off solar input. So the system says how much energy is being used, how much hot water is used at a certain time, and when is that hot water used, and then if figures out based off of those figures how can it use the solar thermal energy. This is different from a program like RETScreen, which works based off of calculating solar energy produced by the sun and then directly putting that onto the system, so there's a little bit of a nuance there. This works from demand versus from production. Having the system sized based on demand gives you a more accurate result. So RETScreen is still good, still useful, you just need to know its limitation. T*SOL also has its own limitations. One of the limitations is that it only simulates predetermined solar thermal systems. The difference here is that rather than allow you to custom our systems, T*SOL has built in about 50 or so prepackaged, predetermined system layouts, which they think are optimal systems. And they do work about 9 out of 10 systems, any sort of domestic hot water, any sort of space heating system, any sort of large domestic hot water scale system, or even pool heating system, T*SOL will work really well for. However, if you are starting to do more unique situations, say for instance you have a factory and you need to used a certain amount of hot water for a certain application then things... All right, let's see if people see my PowerPoint now, is everybody able to see this? [Technical difficulties break] I think I have a PowerPoint that should be shared now can people see this is this working? So as I mentioned we’re looking at T*SOL and for today’s topics were going to look at a couple different things in T*SOL. We’re going to look at simple domestic hot water systems, how to read T*SOL reports and basic Combi Systems with pools and commercial systems in terms of pre-heating domestic hot water. So let’s keep going. So simple domestic hot water systems I’m going to show an example here in a little bit. Let’s imagine you have a customer in New York and he owns a house inhabited by five people and they’re looking to offset their solar thermal cost. They have a pre-existing fifty gallon domestic hot water tank. So the question is how do we figure out what sort of system this size for them? What do we want to offer? And so we would jump over to T*SOL. Let me share that with you. Can everybody see T*SOL is this working for people? So we should have T*SOL up and running. So he we have a system. We have five people in a house they have a fifty gallon pre-existing hot water tank and they’re looking to do some sort of solar thermal system. So I’m going to open up. We create a new project and in this case I’ll open because I had one created for this webinar. So we do a solar domestic hot water system. This is based off of our store max using our store max sec tanks in our empire kits. Right now the empire kits are being offered in New York. They are set up to get the maximum amount of credit possible the New York state rebate offers $1.50 for every kilowatt hour of solar energy produced. So we’re a going to set up a T*SOL model based of that. This system here you can choose in T*SOL you have a system selection tool bar. We are going to look at what T*SOL systems we have available. For domestic hot water often times we’re going to use the system A2 which is our domestic hot water system with two tanks. So this assumes that the first tank over on the right is the pre-existing tank this is the one that your customer or client will already have in their house. The second tank is the new solar tank in this case its’ the store max SE tank that we’re going to be using. So we’ll select that and this is the layout we have. Once we get into the layout we can begin to modify things. So first we begin by modifying the hot water. You would just double click on the faucet and we change its regular hot water usage. The general rule of thumb is twenty gallons per person per day. So our average daily consumption for a house with five people in it is 100 gallons. So that’s what we’ll set up. We’re going to have for profile we’ll say it’s a house with max water usage in the evening. If people are mornings we can change it to mornings max. Select the right profile is helpful. So we’ll go here we’ve selected what our lobe looks like. This is our pre-existing 50 gallon tank. T*SOL has a lot of generalizations when they put tanks in and we can use their standard tank to do an estimate and approximation. So then we’ll change for the solar tank we’ll have our SolarMaxx SE tank. So there are three sizes of the empire kits. They are fifty gallon, eighty gallon and one hundred and nineteen gallon. We’re going to start off by Titan Power plus Su2. We can change the collector that we want to use if we want to sub in. So we click on select and we can sub in a Titan Power VHP20 if we wanted. That’s another version of the kit. So we can have that. For our purposes we’ll go with the Titan Power plus SU2 and run it. One other thing you want to change is setting up your flow rate. So we have our collector loop and typically we do a gallon per minute per square meter of collector surface area. So for flat plates the flow rate for a Titan Power plus SU2 is .44 gallons per minute. The collector is approximately 2 square meters so in here we’d enter in .22 as our volume metric flow rate. Let’s begin by simulating this to see what we can get. We click this button here which is the simulation button and if you click here you can view how the temperatures change over time. You can have it set to thirty minutes so you see every thirty minutes what’s happening. Sixty minutes goes even faster. Or you can just turn off the view and let the system just calculate data by itself. After you finish calculating it you’ll do a project report. This will show you what sort of production you have. So as you can see there are a couple things to notice. First on the first page importance is the results of annual simulation. So this shows off how much annually power is going to be produced by your solar thermal system. It starts by calculating the surface area of the collectors and how much solar energy is going to hit that area. Then based off of certain losses it will calculate how much energy is going to be produced by the collector. So you see that we have 8.72 million Btu’s produced per year. But the total energy or energy put on the system the total energy produced is going to be about 4.55 million Btu’s per year. This is used then to calculate your system efficiency. So high system efficiency is based off of being able to convert all the radiation on the specific area to energy in your collector loop. You can also look at the domestic hot water solar fraction which is 20% which is pretty low. Typically for domestic hot water you want to be between 50-70% of a solar fraction. We figure out that our solar contribution to domestic hot water is 4.82 million Btu’s per year. In New York State right now the incentive is $1.50 dollars per kilowatt hour for the system production over the course of the year. So we can convert 4.92 Btu’s and it converted that into our kilowatt hours and figuring out the rebate for this system would be about $2,000. But we want to improve our solar fraction. So we’re going to increase the size of our system. So we’ll change this to an 80 gallon SolarMaxx SE tank and change this to two collectors. Let’s take a look at this production. So we’ll simulate the system again. We’ll look at our project report. You’ll notice that there’s a pretty big jump. We moved from about 20% solar fraction to 40% solar fraction. We’re still seeing 50% system efficiency so an efficient system. The solar contribution to domestic hot water is 9.18. So quickly jumping over here 9.18 converts to $4,000 worth of rebate which is the maximum rebate that you’re able to apply for in New York State for the empire kit. For this family using an empire kit eighty gallon system on top of their pre-existing fifty gallon tank would give them a 40% solar fraction and 50% system efficiency and $4,000 back from the state automatically on top of the 30% federal credit and 25% state credit. So there’s a lot of money that people could get back for a system like this. We’re quickly able to simulate that. So the first page of your results are always very important. The top graph up here looks at the total solar contribution compared to the total energy consumption. Your goal is for this yellow line basically to be below your orange line because if you’re having more solar production then consumption you enter into periods of stagnation. Which are to be avoided when designing solar thermal systems. Another important to look at is your daily maximum collector temperature. Which your goal is to keep that below 200 degrees. This is what the maximum temperature your collectors are going to reach. If you keep it below 200 degrees you don’t have to worry about your heat transfer fluid vaporizing. So this is really good for your solar system overall. As you can see here we’re looking at max temperature of maybe 151.60 so this is good. Page four of our report is something people have often times are confused about. So I just want to take a little bit of time to explain this. This is an energy balance schematic. It works based off of energy input and energy output. We’ll start at the top up here number one is the collector surface area. This is the amount of radiation solar installation that is going to affect or going to land upon or solar collectors. So the amount is listed below 17.5 or 17,500.7 killi Btu’s per year. Then we have losses in our collectors. So optical losses which is 1.1 and thermal losses which is 1.2. You see this is a certain amount of percentage of your initial energy is lost to these things. The difference is the energy produced by the collector array. So that then flows into your piping and your piping has some of its own losses. It’s internal and external pipe losses. That energy is transferred from your piping into your solar hot water tank. Then you look at what the losses are in those tanks individually so 4.1 and 3.1 are losses from having hot water sit in those tanks. Six is the energy you use. So propane or natural gas that’s burned is used by your heater to heat up water. So that energy is transferred over in 6.1 and then nine looks at the total amount of hot water that you’re using in your system. So the energy that you need overall is number nine and the way energy for number nine supplies through six and one. It’s a fairly helpful way of looking at your solar system in terms of thinking through where can you improve and make your system more efficient overall. But sometimes when using this with customers’ people can get confused about what’s happening. So I wanted to take a minute to go over that. I realize that it’s already 12:30 and there’s a lot more that I was hoping to cover. Sorry for the technical issues. I want to talk about one other thing real quick. I want to look at Combi systems so I’ll open up my Combi systems webinar. If we look at our initial systems A2 is the system that we’d choose for domestic hot water primarily. A5 is the system that I would choose for doing a space heating and domestic hot water system so our Combi systems. That’s what I’ve selected here. This is actually a model of our C-tech tank. Our C-tech storage tank is 211 gallons and it has a coil for our solar loop. The domestic hot water actually doesn’t stay in this tank itself it passes through this upper coil and heats up and then comes off the top. So we have our solar power in the tank as well you have a gas or wood boiler directly connected into your tank as well. You’d set your load at whatever you have it. So you set your load for your hot water the normal way you do it. But you change things for space heating. Typically for space heating there’s two things to look at. First is the heating energy requirement which you see on the left is just a little house button. So I’m getting a question about the C-tech tank if it’s ASME-certified. The C-tech tank design is really interesting ASME ratings state if your tank is over 130 gallons or 120 gallons. Then a domestic hot water must be certified through the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. The C-tech tank has an interesting way of getting around this. So there’s 211 gallons of water storage inside the tank. However the water inside of the tank isn’t powerable water. The only water stored inside the tank is the water that’s in this internal coil here. What’s actually really nice about this system is that we have our solar loop collector here and then our domestic hot water loop over here. So this fits the profile for a double walled heat exchanger because we have one wall here and then another wall here. So that’s separates the solar fluid from domestic hot water. So this is a really efficient design and a very compact design as well. So you only need one tank to do both space heating and hot water. We choose our heating energy requirements often times we will look at the square footage for the house. So if we had a 2,000 square foot house or a 2,500 square foot house we’d just enter in the size house. The other requirement to enter is its standard kind of heat loss per hour so the building. The general rule of thumb this is kind of a rough estimation is that you typically lose 10 to 40 btus per hour per square foot. Ten Btu’s per hour per square foot is very well insulated house. Forty Btu’s per hour is a very poorly insulated house. So I’ll play with these figures so for I said 50 you give me 20 Btu’s per hour per square foot. So this is a medium level installation for the house and then we have two sorts of heating systems. We have high temp heating and low temp heating. Low temp heating is typically what you would use for radiant floor. So you could enter in the design supply and return temps. High temps are usually used for a forced air or radiant baseboards. Often times you’ll have radiant floor on the bottom on the first floor and then either forced air or something else on the second floor. So you have a split. High temp is used 35% of the time and low temp is used 60% of the time mainly because the temperature from the bottom from the first floor rises up to the second floor. So we’ll set up our system. For C-tech system we would have six flat plates. This is the helium max Combi FP120 I think. That number is based off the active collector surface area so 120. With that we’ll run a simulation and see what sort of results we get. So this is for a 2,500 square foot house we have 120 feet of collectors surface area. We see we have a fairly low collector surface area. So 17% solar fraction and 37% system efficiency. So it’s doing some work you know but it’s not a great amount of production. So we’re going to make some changes to the design. We know we need more collectors and if we’re going to have more collectors for a space heating system. We’re going to need a larger storage tank. One of the great features on T*SOL is it allows you to create multiple variance. So I’m going to go here to file and create new variant. So what I’m doing here is I’m using all that information I’ve inputted into this initial system and I’m going to select a system with new hydraulics using the current values. I will actually use the same system again but you can change a system if you so choose. We’re going to change so we have our tank is going to become a SunMaxx NP tank. These are our large non-pressurized tanks. So we’ll use a 328 gallon tank. The major change we need to make here is it’s height versus its diameter. So our C-tech tanks are great for stratification. Our NP tanks work well but they aren’t as good. So this number here 1.6. I’m going to change that and we can also then up the number of collectors. So with this those changes we have everything else as it was before. Now we’ll run the simulation to see how this system using an NP tank functions comparatively to our C-tech tank. You see here we have a little bit higher solar fraction we’re taking care of a lot more of the domestic hot water. Our maximum collector temperatures are a little bit down from what they were earlier. We’re going to try one other thing here let’s add a new variance again. Accept this time rather then having adjusted the heating of your living space. We’re also going to have a pool. Having the pool with space heating is great way of setting up a solar thermal system. I think it should be back online again. Hopefully we won’t have any other internet connectivity issues. So we’re going to change this to a SunMaxx NP 328 gallons 1.6 height and diameter. Change this to 35%. So we have our system setup the same as it was before. Change our collectors so we had eight collectors before. We can increase the number of collectors we have, if we have a heat dump like a pool. Here we have our system but now we’re going to add a pool into it. T*SOL struggles to calculate pools well. So you have to take its system sizing with a grain of salt. Often times I like to work with T*SOL pools if I have a base heating system to supplement it. But if I’m just doing a pool by itself T*SOL doesn’t simulate pools as well as I would like it too. So we’re going to have our swimming pool season be mid May to September 1st. The ground temperature in February in Elmira is a lot colder so it’s 35. But in August it will get up to 55. A really important number here is the daily fresh water requirement. This can be guessed from the number of swimmers per day. So if I said five swimmers it would re-calculate how many gallons of fresh water I needed. So it changes things accordingly. This a good rule of thumb if you don’t have a good sense of how much fresh water they’re putting into their pool. But if you have an actual number that you have from your client you can enter that number right here. For the pool we’ll enter its length 25X15X5. Our desired pool temp of 72 and max pool temp of 85. You can enter in any sheltering and you can have how much wind impression it has and the color of the ground. So a darker pool tile will absorb more solar energy. You can say if it has a pool cover or not. Hot tub requests are pretty interesting when compared to pools. You can try to size them up in T*SOL by setting your pool size to a specific kind of length, width and depth. Then changing your desired temperatures accordingly. However what I found to be a more effective way of sizing systems you can use T*SOL to produce some kind of report for them. My general rule of thumb though is to look at what sort of energy requirements they want or they use for their hot tub. So if you can get a statement kind of looking at either how much water and energy goes into it and then kind of calculating backwards. So I could kind of adjust it by saying “I know a hot tub should be about 110 degrees.” And then work backwards to determine how many Btu’s I need to heat up that hot tub to get to that desired temperature. Then with those Btu’s in hand figure out what sort of solar system I need. I’ve definitely seen people size up hot tubs. I actually talked with one customer who recently did a hot tub. Who was saying that it heated his hot tub so well that he actually got a second one. So they have two hot tubs and the use them as efficient and productive. So you go through the process of setting these things up and when you have it all good to go. Our speed .23. We’ll run our simulation again. Look through the simulation process. You can see with ten collectors we have a 71% solar fraction per hot water and a 44% solar fraction for our overall. Our system average pool temperature is 71.4 which is really good. Our system efficiency is at 41%. So overall this is really good. You can see here that there’s some spikes on our energy consumption that are above the amount for…Our solar contribution sometimes exceeds our energy contribution. This is okay during the summertime only because we have a pool where we can dump that excess energy to. If we didn’t have that pool we would have some issues. We can see that here the majority of the time our collectors are below 200 degrees. We have a couple of months after the pool season is over before space heating this really needed that our collectors spike to above 240. This is all right and this isn’t the end of the world because it’s a periodic thing so not all the time. However if we wanted to prevent against that we could either add more storage or take away one of the collectors or change the angle at which our collectors are tilted. So all those are good options. If everybody has time I have one more thing I’d like to show off. Which is how we calculate our commercial systems. Commercial systems the best one to choose from in T*SOL. So go to T*SOL and choose their large scale systems. C3 is the top system which we have selected here. This way works based off of a large buffer tank that pre-heats water going into the pre-existing domestic hot water tank. So we have our collector loop which heats up and transfers energy to our buffer tank and then as new water is requested into this domestic hot water tank. It will go through here and get heated up through this buffer tank and then go into the pre-existing hot water tank. So I have this set-up for a school system. So if we look at our load we can see. We can see what the energy consumption looks like at a given time. We see that throughout the week it’s consistent and over the weekends energy uses change. Energy is high during the regular week and low during the weekends. Over the course of the year it’s high during the regular school year and drops during holidays. So we’re going to use a 1,000 gallon NP storage tank. We’re going to use 40 collectors. So if we were to estimate 3,000 gallons of hot water per day 3,200. The best way to figure out what sort of ball park collectors you should size for would be to divide the number of gallons by 2 and then divide that number by 20. So the basic rule of thumb is that 2 gallons of hot water can be produced by one square foot of collector surface area. Our Titan Power plus is approximately 20 square feet. So 3,250 divided by 2 divided by 20 is equal to 81. So we aren’t going to want to put 81 collectors on a school which has low loads during the summertime. One of the really important things to note when doing a commercial system is that sizing is based off of system efficiency rather than solar fraction. A pet peeve of mine is when folks who have commercial applications come to us asking for a high solar fraction because the reality is when you have such a large demand. You need a ridiculously large solar system. That becomes economically not feasible. So what you want is the most efficient solar system. The most bang for your buck. So rather then doing 80 collectors we’ll try 40 collectors as a starting point. What we get is about a 25-27% solar fraction with a system efficiency of above 50%. This is the goal you want to have a system efficiency above 50% when doing commercial systems. That’s the thing you want to size on. You’ll see here we have a high load we don’t need all that load but we’re doing it pretty efficiently. The other thing you can note is we have a 140-150 degree max temperature year round. So our collectors are working well the system functions very well. It doesn’t have the high solar fraction of a small domestic hot water system for a home but it works and it does the job and it’s cost effective. Those are all important things when selling a commercial job. So I know we kind of got off track and had to get rushed through some technical issues. But I want to open it up to any questions you might have about T*SOL or how we use T*SOL here.

Using Heat Exchangers 01.03.2011

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS USING HEAT EXCHANGERS Date: 01/03/2011 Another edition of our SunMaxx Solar webinar series. Surprisingly in Upstate, New York, we’re having a very good solar day. Our collectors as of right now are about 150 degrees. We’re dumping into our forced air furnace, so we’ve reached our set point. Our domestic hot water tank is already maxed out at 135. So it’s one of those rare beautiful solar days in not so sunny Upstate. I want to spend the next half an hour talking about heat exchangers. Now, there’s a lot of debate now in the industry about the effectiveness of internal coils versus external heat exchangers, the pros and cons of each. And I’d like to make it clear with everyone that over the next 29 minutes now, I really can’t cover too much in too much detail but I do look at this as a good way to begin or supplement an existing learning experience. So, I’d like to welcome you to ask questions as we go through. And certainly, email me any particular questions that you have afterwards and I can turn your attention to some other resources. Okay? So, I do have a bit to cover here so I’ll get started. Please do ask me questions if you have anything you’d like to – you’d like me to cover. Can I just get a confirmation from someone that you can hear me okay? Great. Okay, super. Thank you. Alright. Now, generally there’s two types of heat exchangers. Those that are outside of the tank and those that are inside the storage tank. Now, some of you may have your preferences. Each serves different purpose. Outside of the tank, we’re generally talking about braised plates or also known as plate and frame exchangers, shell and tube heat exchangers, which tend to be stainless steel or tube within a tube heat exchangers. These require secondary pump. Internal exchangers most often are the smooth copper. They’re coils of smooth copper. Occasionally, we see a corrugated stainless steel and as well as finned copper exchangers. Now, the finned copper maximizes the space required. They have an extremely high heat exchange capacitance. Okay. Some other miscellaneous exchangers that we can talk about are the Solar Wand. I’ll go into a little bit of detail on the Butler Max Solar Wand and how effective that is at small domestic hot water systems. The Sidearm thermo-siphon, this is an old school method of heat exchange. Typically mounted on the side of a solar tank which utilizes convection and a dropping – a more dense colder fluid drops into the exchanger which causes the heat exchange from the solar loop into the tank and the colder fluid drives the convection cycle which forces the warmer fluid back to the roof to pick up – exactly. These have been gaining some attention, the Sidearm thermo-siphons. Some manufacturers are beginning to look into these and perfect the old school style. You know, as a manufacturer, SunMaxx has not quite found a particular use for them that outweighs the traditional heat exchangers that we have. But we’re still open to, you know, product updates. Another one that is actually being used right now as I speak is the water to air exchanger. This is like a car radiator. We have one right now. It’s mounted in our cold air plenum which is taking heat from our solar loop directly the glycol on one side and the air on the other side. So more specifically, our water to air heat exchanger is more appropriately the heat transfer fluid to air exchanger. Okay. Now, let’s talk about internal coils for a moment. I like internal coils. These to me are a simpler design and any time you can have a simpler design, there’s less room for failure. And not only a simpler design but it’s easy to size up an internal coil, especially when you have custom-built tanks like the non-pressure tanks from STSS. Okay. Most often, this is not always the case, but most often these coils are three-quarter-inch copper. And if I’m using a three-inch copper coil, I can size up a copper coil with the production of my solar loop per square foot equals the heat transferability of one linear foot of coil. So basically, if I have 100 square feet of collector area, I’m going to use a 100 linear feet of three-quarter-inch copper. That’s going to ensure that I never over produce. The difference in cost is minimal. It allows me for some, if I want to expand my system, if for some reason I want to increase my production with reflectors or anything like that, one foot to one foot is generally the rule of thumb that SunMaxx practices based on our experience with these non-pressure tanks. Now, Vaughn also makes these internal coils that are finned copper. And the heat exchange rate in finned copper is about ten times that of smooth cooper. So, it requires a coil ten times smaller. And this is really important when you’re trying to maximize your heat exchange in a small tank, for example, a 50-gallon tank. Traditionally, if I use a 50-gallon tank, that size tank is going to limit the size of the coil that I can choose which would in turn limit the size of the collector field. By using finned copper, these are submerged in replaceable coils from Vaughn. The heat exchange capacity is about ten times that of smooth copper. Now, when I size up internal coils for domestic hot water flow, the most important consideration there is the flow rate on the domestic side. Alright. So, each coil, assuming that it’s a three-quarter-inch copper, it’s going to accommodate about 4 to 5 gallons per minute of flow rate. That flow, 4 to 5 gallons, will allow me for just about a 90% heat exchange effectiveness across the coil assuming that my ground water is coming in at 50 and my solar loop is at 120. So, as I increase that flow rate, you obviously will decrease your heat exchange effectiveness. So, for domestic hot water loops, if my limiting factor is flow rate, I can pipe several in parallel to achieve the same results. So in this little photo you see here, we’ve got – in that total tank, there’s eight coils. So those eight coils at 5 gallons a minute allows me to preheat about 45, 40 to 45 gallons of cold water per minute. So, that’s a pretty high flow rate for larger jobs. So, for solar loop, sizing coils, one foot of coil per one foot of collector absorber. Okay, and be careful about sizing up your collector field based on gross area. Because if you size that based on gross, for example, on evacuated tube, SunMaxx 30 as an example has a gross area of 52 but an absorber area of only 30 square feet. So, you size these based on an absorber area. And for domestic hot water loop, you size that based on the required flow rate not so much the differential that you’re looking for but based on the flow rate. Okay. Here’s an example of how we use a non-pressure storage tank with the coils. So for the solar loop, the solar loop are the two loops that are tied in the pumps off from the pump stations. So, we have eight coils for the solar loop. All eight coils are tied in parallel returning back to the collector from the bottom of the tank. So if you notice, the hottest fluid should go in to the top of the coil and the coldest fluid comes out of the bottom and back to the collector. You want to remove as many BTUs from that solar loop as possible so you always go in counter-current flow relative to stratification. So, inside the storage tank, as the heat moves up, the solar loop should move in opposite direction. And then the two coils on the top are for the domestic purposes. So, we have two coils in parallel. Since we have two, you know that each is capable of 4 to 5 gallons a minute so you a total domestic flow of less than 10 gallons a minute. What’s nice about these non-pressure tanks is they are customizable. So depending on the stratification that I’m looking for or the different quality of BTUs, I can mount these coils anywhere in that tank that I wished to and I can achieve, and I can pull a high quality BTUs out of the tank or I can pull low quality BTUs depending on the level of that tank that I insert the coils. Anybody have any question at this point? Okay. Here’s an example of the internal coils. I’ll take a look at that, Drew. That’s a good point. Give me a second and I’ll take a look there. Now, the use of internal coils for solar loop, like I said, my preference is internal coils because of their simplicity. You may pay a little bit more especially for the non-pressure storage tank when you’re getting into commercial jobs. Bu they do present a much simpler approach. And in the end, and again, this is my opinion, that the simpler that we make these systems, the less points of failure that can occur. And ultimately, the more professional the installation will seem if there’s just less points that can fail. But again, that’s my opinion. Okay. So, then continuing to look at this pressurize storage tank with the internal coils. Obviously, the bottom internal coil is use for the solar loop. The top internal coil is tied in to the heating loop. Now, as I mentioned before, your solar loop should always move in counter-current flow to the direction of the heat movement inside the storage tank. So, you want the hottest to transfer with the hottest, coldest to transfer with the coldest. So, on the top coil, usually the top coils inside of the smaller pressurized storage place are not capable of delivering the maximum amount of heat that our load requires. Let me reiterate that point. Most pressurized storage tanks do not have coils that are sized large enough to handle heat loads for most residential homes. These top coils can supplement a heat load but they can’t replace the heat load. So, in this particular drawing or schematic, you see a boiler that is supplementing the storage tank. Okay? So, we have our domestic hot water load coming off of the storage tank and that domestic hot water load, the only source of energy is that storage tank. The storage tank however has two sources, the solar loop and the boiler. So, rather than letting this tank delivers the entire BTU load to the house, this tank supplements the boiler and in turn, the boiler supplements the tank. Okay? So, you could take a look at that schematic and very good. Alright. Now as I mentioned, this internal coil, internal wand exchanger, this is a pretty unique product. It comes from Barry Butler from Butler Sun Solutions and from what I understand he’s got about 4,000 wand hours as he’s calling them. Those are the customers who bought wands and accumulated the hours of use. And so, over 4,000 wand hours and he said, one return and it was under warranty. So, there is a very high degree of success with these wands. The limiting factor obviously is flow rate. Okay? He’s got a three-quarter-inch copper tubing that’s coming down off the solar return down into the bottom of the wand and then back up and out for the solar supply. So, he’s limited to relatively small systems for domestic hot water. I have sold and designed many systems that are using this wand and what I’ve seen, the thing that’s most impressive is the stratification that we’re seeing inside these tanks. It’s very adaptable for most existing hot water tanks. Let me just read this question here. That’s correct, Adam. Yes. So, one of the things as I said that’s most impressive is the stratification. So as an example, a ream Marathon hot water tank where a 36-inch wand on a normal solar day is seeing about a 50-degree differential from the top of the tank to the bottom of the tank. So, there’s no disruption in the stratification of the tank when you use this wand. In fact, the heat exchange actually starts at the top of the wand, and so the hot is always mix with the hot just like we like it and it moves in counter current to the stratification. So, I was really surprised with the stratification that we see but it really separates the quality that allows you to use just what you need and save some for later I guess. Alright. Another external heat exchangers, a lot of these stainless steel shell and tube that you see here are used for swimming pools. This is a perfect way to tie in to take a combi-system which is producing significant amount of heat in the winter time and then with a simple three port valve and a stainless steel shell and tube exchanger, we could pull heat off of the solar loop and dump it directly into our hot tub or swimming pool. One of the nice things about these shell and tube heat exchangers is they have two different flow capacities. So, for the solar loop, we’re using, there’s a one-inch port and on the pool loop, it’s up to an inch and a half port which means we can get about 60 to 70 gallons a minute on one side of the heat exchanger and maintain a flow of 5 to 10 gallons a minute on the opposite side of the heat exchanger. Let me show you a diagram here that illustrates the use of an external heat exchanger. As you notice, all we’ve done with this design is remove the coil and brought it to the outside. One of the nice things about external exchangers is they are serviceable, if need be, we have areas with a lot of mineralization, so you can remove the heat exchanger. Another nice thing is it is easy to oversize an external heat exchanger. So for example, if I have a very high load for my solar loop, a pressurized storage tank will have a fixed-sized coil, and it may not be suitable. So, the only way for me to get a larger coil is to buy a larger tank. Well I may not need a larger tank, so by using internal coils you’re really limited to the size of the heat exchanger, but by using external heat exchangers, I can go from a 10 plate and double the capacity to the 20 plate for an increase in cost of about 20 percent or less. Really in the end it only amounts to less than a $100 difference. So, in my mind, one of the best features of using external heat exchangers is your ability to scale it up at a low cost. So you can oversize heat exchangers, which we recommend over sizing them anyway. So I’ve got a couple of questions here. External heat exchangers can be dismantled easily if you use unions. Okay, so if you’re not using unions then it becomes a little bit more difficult. So you know with the additional cost, try to use unions wherever possible and valves. Then the question regarding the SunMaxx, the solar wand, that’s really rated for not so much the size of the storage tank as it is the capacity. These can transfer about 9,000 BTUs per hour. Yes, so the wand heat exchangers are capable of about 9,000 BTUs an hour heat exchange, which means they’re going to be good for about 40 to 50 square feet of collector area total. A little bit less with evacuated tubes because of their higher production per hour during peak production days. And then the use of electric elements, regarding the stratification with electric elements, that is one of the things that most often the electric element ports come in the middle of the table range. And I would like to see electric element ports be closer to the top two-third, and then set these on a timer as to not maintain your solar preheat by way of electric element during any part of the solar day. So there is some manipulation that can happen to help increase the effectiveness of electric heating elements when you’re using internal coils. Alright, now sizing up heat exchangers, Tim, shell tube heat exchanger can be adequate for radiant floor as long as it’s sized properly. So, all we need to know is the total load on that radiant floor and the flow rate, and then we can size up a shell tube. However, I would probably recommend, rather than a shell tube, I would recommend a braised plate heat for radiant floor heating. You’ll get a better heat exchange through braised plate than we do with shell tube, the only benefit to me is that the shell tube, being stainless steel…

NYSERDA Solar Thermal Incentives for New York State 12.16.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS NYSERDA SOLAR THERMAL INCENTIVES FOR NEW YORK STATE Date: 12/16/2010 Okay. Good morning. Charlie, I see you're the only participant this morning at this webinar. So this is good for you. I can customize it a little bit. I'm going to go over the NYSERDA PON 2149. This is an opportunity where we're going to see about a 600% growth rate in the solar thermal market that is already funded. So can you confirm that you can hear me, Charlie? You can type in the little chat box before I go too far. I just want to see that you can hear me. Great. Okay. So, basically what NYSERDA wants to see happen realized is about a 600% growth in solar thermal installations in the next five years. And they funded it with a $24 million incentive package, with the goal of installing 45 megawatts of solar thermal capacity. 45 megawatts would represent a 600% growth rate in this industry in 5 years. So that growth rate is really unparalleled in other industries. It's similar to a growth rate they saw in the European market, but over the course of 7 to 9 years. We're going to see the rate is going to be much greater here in New York State. Now, a quick overview. For residential domestic hot water consumers, they are going to cap out at $4,000. For non-residential, laundromats, hotels, and carwashes and the like, they cap out at $25,000. This funding is expected to cover at least 15 to 20% of the cost. Now, when I say "up front", it's cost paid to the installer. Part of the fund is released earlier. However, the system needs to be fully commissioned and approved prior to the installer actually getting the check from NYSERDA. And it's only for electric hot water consumers. So they have to have an electric hot water heater in operation for at least a year. So, looking ahead, if you have clients that are looking to upgrade their existing hot water system, and they install an electric hot water tank, you would not be able to take advantage of this funding for another year. So they have to have it in operation for a full year. Now the incentives do get paid to the installer. However, the benefit to the installer needs to be deducted from the invoice. So the real benefit needs to go to the end user in form of having a lower cost up front. So essentially, the installer has to ride that benefit from the time they begin installation to the time they get the check from NYSERDA. They're only available for new systems, so they've got to be new systems. They can't be upgrades to existing solar thermal systems. They have to be entirely new. And the incentive that the end user will receive is based on electrical usage displacement. So if they're consuming 3,000 kilowatts a year for hot water, the solar thermal upgrade can replace 2,000 kilowatts. And the incentive will be based on that 2,000 displaced electrical consumption. Now the solar thermal system needs to be sized by the manufacturer or the installer so that it does not exceed 80% solar fraction. Now we typically don't recommend a solar fraction any higher than this anyway. But NYSERDA will not pay for any system that exceeds an 80% solar fraction. And over time, next year for example, and in following years, the incentive, which is currently at $1.50 per kilowatt will be diminished, will be reduced so they have a certain amount of funds available. They're loading the front end of this incentive to stimulate the market. So the early adopters, the early installers, are the ones that are going to benefit the most, because next year, that incentive will be less. Now, NYSERDA is also going to benefit from this, not only be reducing their electrical consumption with their customers, but also by acquiring the renewable energy credits for all these systems. So, essentially, they're going to have renewable energy credits for 45 megawatts of solar thermal capacity. And they hold those recs for 3 years. This doesn't affect the homeowners really because there's not a lot that a homeowner can do with the rec. Commercial projects is another story. That is, one of the benefits of doing a commercial job that the building owner will hold a real body of credits. Okay, the installer, in order to be on the NYSERDA eligibility list, the scholar must meet one of these criteria: they must be either NABCEP solar thermal, they must have 18 hours of manufacturer certified training such as the SunMaxx EduPower, or they have to have accomplished 40 hours of training in a nationally recognized accreditation program or as an apprentice. Okay, so those first three options, any one of those will suffice, however after two years they have to become NABCEP certified. If they do not become NABCEP certified after two years they have to reapply for NYSERDA eligibility. Once they are accepted into the program, then they have to sign an agreement and they are on the permanent list for NYSERDA, permanent being for two years. Okay, the first step once a contract is secure, the installer must do a clipboard energy audit. Okay, that clipboard must access the building's energy consumption, paying particular attention to the electric load. So that is accomplished in two steps. First, interview the homeowner and try to understand the age of the building and the energy use, and then doing an identification and energy efficiency measures, where they can make upgrades to energy consumption and at little or no cost. And then it needs to conclude with a debriefing for the homeowner. The homeowner is not obligated to take action on any of these recommendations, but the installer is obligated to make recommendations, and then the homeowner can decide. This is something that you should do regardless of the NYSERDA incentive when you do a site survey of the building, especially for solar thermal we can have a much bigger impact on their total energy budget by incorporating other upgrades in addition to solar thermal. Here are some examples of what can be included in the energy audit. We can inspect their wiring, the timers on air conditioners and any vampire loads, we can look at the age and condition of doors and windows and weather ceilings? Are there any installation upgrades for insulation? Are the appliances energy star qualified? Okay, so some very simple, and they call it a clipboard audit because you don't have any instrumentation that you necessarily need, all you need to do is make some observations, and from those observations you make recommendations. This is customary and ultimately it's going to lead to a much larger energy reduction. Okay, the non-residential clipboard audit is a little more detailed in that besides the first two recommendations, they also have to take a look at energy star's portfolio manager as a benchmarking tool, and if they're able to create a score, and energy use index for that building. Once the energy use index is determined, then the building owner has a better understanding of what additional funds they're going to be eligible for. So NYSERDA PON 2149 is for solar thermal upgrades only, however there are other grants, many different grants that are accessible for non-residential buildings that are seeking energy upgrades. So a good installer of solar thermal will have his hand in many of those additional upgrades as a referral or a consultant, whether it's residential or commercial the installer must leave a list of certified contractors that could potentially perform these services. No in order to apply for the incentive, you can expect it to take about 20 business days. The appendix B, attached to the link that I'm going to show you in a few moments, can be filled out, it doesn't take very long at all, just a few minutes. However, one of the most important things is that the proposal, the application must include a simulated software performance assessment. This simulation can be run by RETScreen which is a public entity that can be downloaded for free from any installer, or solar pathfinder which is purchased through solar pathfinder or T*SOL. Now T*SOL is the software that SunMaxx uses, and is willing to do T*SOL reports for your system, so all you've got to do is contact your sales rep and he or she will enter the appropriate information for your system and spit out a T*SOL report for you to be able to send that off for your application. Once they've determined whether the eligibility for this system, they will notify you whether it's approved or declined. If it's declined, they'll tell you why and you can make changes. If it's approved then the funds will be set aside and the installer will be notified and the installer will be notified that the funds are set aside for that installation. Then and only then should the installer begin that installation. So knowing that the installer will not be paid until the system had been certified, the homeowner basically reaps the benefit of that NYSERDA incentive immediately but the installer will not be paid until the system has been certified after installation. Here's an example of appendix B, the application process. It is quite simple to fill out for the system, all you have to do is obviously the customer information at the top and then the type of system and then we have to look at the equipment being used. We recommend that you go with a manufacturer's prepackaged system or OG300. OG300 system does not require a performance assessment. If it's a prepackaged kit, the components must be OG100 certified, and the manufacturer must supply a performance assessment, as I spoke about before. That performance assessment is going to give us, and I'll show you here in just a moment, the performance assessment is going to give you a total annual output. Okay, now in terms of the requirements for these systems that are non-OG300 as I mentioned must come with a five-year warranty, this is a manufacturer's warranty covering performance, and after five years performance cannot fall below 10 percent of initial performance. So basically after five years the warranty needs to cover at least a 90% production as if it were new. The system must also be monitored every three months for production. Now that production monitoring can be accomplished using standard RESOL IntelliMaxx controller. That IntelliMaxx controller is going to accumulate the kilowatts produced, and every three months the installer can go and read off the controller and submit that to NYSERDA for auditing purposes. It's not real clear how that submittal process will work yet, and if they're going to be submitted at all or randomly audited. Nevertheless, we have it in place with our controllers, the IntelliMaxx that can monitor total kilowatts produced. Now once the installer is notified that the monies have been set aside, they have 120 days to complete the system. That should be ample time, but there is a deadline, and that's a 120 days. Here's an example of a T*SOL that was run for our Empire System Kit. SunMaxx has developed a new kit called the Empire System, which is designed exclusively for electric hot water heater upgrades. For this particular example we have a two-collector system, two SunMaxx TitanPowers, tied into an 80 gallon pressurized tank that is preheating cold water supply to an electric on-demand. The total production on this system is 2800-kilowatt hours. This is after losses and after system efficiency; this is what's being delivered to the storage tank, 2800 kilowatts. So if we take a look at 2800 kilowatts for this particular system, the dealer cost at $3700 allows for a pretty considerable markup for installation, and now we're looking at $8500 for total installed and user cost. Okay, with a 2800 kilowatt per year production, the rebate is going to cap out, it's just over $4000. So the end user can deduct $4000 up front for the cost, homeowner pays the installer the balance, and then the balance of $4500, then the homeowner can get a 30% tax credit on that $4500, which is $1350 and then they get a 25% state tax credit off of the balance of there, which is $787, bringing the final cost to the customer to only $2363. Now with a $2363 initial investment and savings at $532 per year, their return on investment is 22%. Now that's 22% zero risk. Now I don't know any other investment where I can get 22% with zero risk. There's plenty out there that's medium to high risk, but none that are zero risk. Now, the simple payback on 2800 kilowatt hours per year, and paying 19 cents per kilowatt hour, we're going to save $532, which means 4.4 year payback, and this is conservative and it's set at current energy cost. So as prices increase, the values of these systems are going to increase as well. Now here's a couple of action steps that I recommend are made by interested installers. First you've got to get on the NYSERDA eligible installer list. Once you're on the NYSERDA eligible installer list, then you also need to become NABCEP solar thermal certified, and there's a link at the back of this page that shows you how to begin that process. You have to sign and return the eligible installer list, find your potential clients and prequalify them because they must have electric hot water. Then the installer will work with the manufacturer and try to find the most appropriate solar thermal system. Once that is established, then the manufacturer will provide the installer with simulation software, and then the application for the incentive can begin. Once the funds are awarded, the installer begins, monitors that every three months, they pass the test for NABCEP and become permanently eligible for NYSERDA. If they do not pass the NABCEP exam, then they must reapply to become NYSERDA eligible after two years. Here's a list of links that you can learn more about this NYSERDA funding, the 2149, there's a couple of phone numbers, emails if you have any questions. As always, you can email me and here's a link to the NABCEP requirements for solar thermal certification. This is a long, drawn-out process, so I recommend that you get things started as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your attention, I hope you found it useful. Thanks again, and good luck.

Mounting Strategies 11.22.2010

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 11/22/2010 Well, welcome everyone. Good afternoon, welcome to the SunMaxx Solar webinar series. I’m going to spend the next half an hour talking about various mounting strategies and hopefully some of the information is relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. As always the chat window is open and I encourage you to send some questions my way and I’ll try my best to answer them as they appear. So, without further ado some of you may be familiar with our webinar series. Each week we try to talk about something different and relative and updated. This particular week I’m going to talk about successful mounting strategies. Some of you may have seen a similar webinar a month or so ago and it’s similar, but with a few updates. Okay, so I’m going to get right into it. I’ve got a lot of different things to talk about in terms of mounting and every application is a little bit different. There are, you know, flat roofs, flush roof, tilt mount, ridge mount, steep slopes, shallow slopes can mount directly to the rafters on the rail systems. And neither option is better. It’s just everyone has a little bit different preferences. So, I’m going to try to present to you what SunMaxx has done to help make your job easier and give you the flexibility to install these collectors as you see fit. Okay. So, first of all let me talk for a moment about the new mounting hardware for the TitanPower Plus collector, our engineers have been hard at work and have come up with a very simple and obviously meets and exceeds code in terms of wind and strength requirements. And also, it’s extremely adaptable, very easy to install. I recently installed a system on my own home using the new mounting hardware for the TitanPower Plus and I was extremely happy with how easy it was to put together. Okay. Now, in terms of a single row of collectors versus two collectors or one collector, or multiple banks, the TitanPower Plus hardware gets assembled either a rail mount or without the rail and then the back legs mount directly to the roof. As you see in this picture, this is a photograph of the installation I did at my house. And I used the rail approach. I mounted the rails directly to the purlins off of some roof hooks, which I’ll show you in just a moment. Once the system was… Once the connect system was installed, the collectors simply sit on the rail system. And mounting the actual collectors took me and two of my friends only about 20 minutes to get all the collectors up on the roof and in place. So, once all the ground work is done in terms of mounting to the roof and setting the rails in place, putting the collectors is actually the easiest part, okay. It all starts with this roof hook and flashing. Whether you decide to go directly at point of penetration where you mount the feet directly to the roof or you use the rail, this is the first step. There are several different products out there that accomplish the same thing. Our roof hooks are adaptable for either point of penetration as in mounting the collectors directly to the roof or to the rail. The metal flashing clips sits underneath a shingle by about four inches, so, four inches of it needs to be underneath the row of shingles just above. And then we use these self threading screws to drill directly into the rafter. So, you’re not affixed to a particular rafter placement or position of your collectors, the roof hooks not to the rafters. Once you install a rail then you can slide the collectors to the left or to the right and make it symmetrical. So, these roof hooks have a very high sheer strength and they are aluminum. Now, once you install the flashing there’s absolutely no concern whatsoever for a roof leaking. In a system that I installed, I’ll go back one slide; you can tell I have a metal roof, okay. Well, what I did was use a small piece of butyl underneath the roof hook between the roof hook and the metal. And then I put a piece of butyl self adhesive butyl, on top of the roof hook. So I flashed on top of the metal and I am 100% confident for the life of this system that I will never have any roof leaks as bulk of my roofing skills, right. I know that using this roof hook with flashing will guarantee that there’s not going to be any leakage in my system. Okay. One of the next steps is the connection rail. Now, the rails are threaded to accept these Allen bolts. Okay, see the Allen bolt, those thread directly into the rail. So, once I install the rail anywhere along the roof hooks, and I have to space the roof hooks out four feet center on center. Okay, so I don’t want to put the roof hooks any more than four feet apart. The strength of the rail allows for displacement weight over four feet, but no more. Okay. So, the Allen bolts will thread directly into the rail as seen in the clip on the left. And on the right is the clip that attaches the collector to the rail. Okay, so the photo on the left is attaching the rail to the roof hook and the photo on the right is the clip that helps you attach the collector to the rail. Both of them use the self threaded Allen bolts that will thread directly into the rail, which makes it very easy and quick to install. Okay. It is a metric Allen and if memory serves me it’s nine millimeters. However, a small Allen wrench comes with your system. So, if you don’t have the Allen wrench you will have one included and shipped out to you in a little baggie. Okay. Now, in terms of creating back legs for these, there’s two pieces. Basically, one is the vertical support leg, which is made of the same rail or extrusion as the rail. So, some simple “L” brackets will connect the vertical rail to the horizontal rail and then the back leg. Now, in my case, I went with, what you see here is the hardware for a flat roof or a flat mounting install. In other words you’re either mounting them on the ground or in a flat roof. Okay, so I went with a flat roof, although my roof was not flat, I simply cut the back legs. Alright, so some simple trigonometry, which your sales rep can help you with or it’s also in our technical manual. Based on the roof pitch you will cut the back legs to achieve the desired angle, okay and then, obviously the “L” bracket on the bottom of the back leg will just slide up in the extrusion and mount directly to the rail. Okay, for long banks and collectors you have to union rails together. Okay, so there’s two rails that you’re going to use. One is the extrusion rail that mounts directly to the roof hooks, on the left. And those rail unions, along with their Allen bolts, will thread directly into the rail creating nice tight union between two rails, displacing the weight, hopefully. And on the right a “T” profile rail. Now, I’ll show you later on what a “T” profile does. That is basically the seat for the collectors. So, the “T” profile will mount to the rail and then the collectors will sit in the “T” profile and there’s small bolts that will thread into those slots that you see on the “T” profile gives at its strength. Here’s an up close picture of the “L” brackets that mount directly to the rail. Okay. So, what you’re seeing here is the vertical rail that the collectors lay onto. The “L” brackets then will mount directly to the horizontal rail that you’ve attached to the roof hook. Okay and this is all using the same Allen bolts. There’s a couple that are a different lengths, but they’re all labeled appropriately in your packaging. On the picture on the right you also see a clip. Now, that tension clip is going to accept the “T” profile. So, it makes it very adaptable by being able to adjust the back legs and front legs, to the left or to the right on the rail means they don’t necessarily need to measure exactly the length of my rail ‘cause I have flexibility laterally and as well as flexibility vertically in terms of distance because those little clips will slide up or down the rail, depending where you want your collector to be mounted. So, it makes it extremely versatile and adaptable, but also there’s a lot of wiggle room in terms of making exact penetrations into the roof. It’s not critical. There’s a lot of room for errors so to speak. We don’t particularly encourage error, but we do encourage efficiency. And this allows you to mount your collectors, err, mount your roof hooks in places where, you know, you’re going to get the tightest connection and then you have flexibility in terms of where your collectors mount relative to the roof hook. Alright, in this picture what you see is a TitanPower Plus flush mount. Now, you notice there’s two roof hooks on the bottom and two roof hooks on the top. So, that’s consistent with the recommendations that we make in terms of the number of roof hooks it is required per flat plate collector. Okay. Your sales rep will be sure to design your mounting system depending on what your considerations are. So, all that you need to know is will you put one or two collectors in series. And do you want flush mount or tilt mount? Once our sales rep has that information they’ll make sure that you have all the correct components included. Now, we do recommend that the roof hooks are placed in the middle of each adjoining collector. Okay, so whether you have two collectors or one collector it’s still going to require a total of four roof penetrations. So, four roof hooks, four flashings. Now, this is showing the tilt mount hardware. Okay, now the tilt mount would require three points of penetration as opposed to the flush mount. Flush mount tends to be less expensive because there are less components required. It’s also much easier to install. And I would like to make this recommendation now because it’s appropriate that if you have a roof that’s within 20 to 30 degrees pitch of what is the recommended, that the flat plate and the evacuated tube collectors will still perform within about five percent of their expected performance. So, when considering whether to do a flush mount as in this picture here, versus a tilt mount off the roof the to be added benefit to achieving that proper angle is really quite minimal. So, it’s important to consider obviously performance, but equally important, and in some cases even more important, it is to consider aesthetics, okay. So, I highly encourage you to consider flush mounting your collectors whenever possible. Flush mounting is going to be easier to install. It’s going to require less components and the performance sacrifices are going to be minimal. To be sure your sales rep will be happy to run a report at the various angles that you’re looking to make your installation. Okay, so again, if you have a roof pitch that is within 20 to 30 degrees of what the optimum pitch should be for your collectors you may consider just simply doing a flush mount rather than tilt mount, for three reasons, aesthetics, cost and installation time, which obviously, saves money as well. Okay, here’s another picture of the tilt mount using a rail system. Okay, now with the rail you accomplish obviously, weight disbursement, but more importantly you’re not fixed to rafter location relative to where your collectors are. And so, often, the back legs of collectors do not line up perfectly with the rafters. So, by using the rail system you can mount your roof hooks wherever your rafters are and then move your collectors laterally depending on where you’d like to see them sit on your roof, whether it’s aesthetics or performance, you have lateral movement on the rail whereas you would not have lateral movement with point of penetration mounting that is the back legs mounted directly to the roof. There are some exceptions to that, which I’ll cover in a minute, but generally you want to mount to the rafters. Okay, now here’s a tilt mount without using the rail. So, as I mentioned these points of penetration really should be at the location of the rafter. Okay, if you don’t find a rafter then we’re going to have to have access to these points of penetration underneath the roof. And we’re going to have to use toggle bolt or we’re going to have to use a spanner between the rafters, something that secures this entire collector bank to the roofing system rather than just the decking. This is even more important with flat plate collectors than with evacuated tubes, that you have your collector system mounted to the roof rather than mounted to the decking. And when I say roof, I’m talking about the structural components, that is the rafters or the trusses. Okay, so with flat plates you have a considerable amount of lift, a consistent and considerable amount of lift, on this roof system, especially if your collectors obviously, are facing to the south or in the southeast that means the back of your collectors would be facing to the southwest or the northwest where a lot of the prevailing winds come from. So, it’s important that you secure your collector system to the structural members of the roof and not just the decking. Okay, this is accomplished using a rail versus point of penetration. Okay, now in terms of roof penetrations, obviously you want to make sure that you don’t have to go back, and when you use a flashing materials such as the one shown here, this is PV quick mount that we used to use and I think it’s a very good product, you’re going to ensure that there is no roof leaking. When you do use these penetrations such as roof hook from SunMaxx or a quick mount PV, those ballasts, so to speak, should not exceed more than 48 inches apart. Okay, so if you have the wrong run, say of 10, 12, 20 feet or more, you’re going to have to use multiple rails. And I did show some connections that can be made to union the rails together to maintain a consistent strength. It’s also recommended that you pre-drill holes into your rafters, ¼ inch holes. In terms of rafter screws, we recommend that you use a three inch high sheer strength screw and that it be self threading, right, or that you pre-drill the hole. In terms of mounting these ballasts to purlins, for example, if the purlin is just an inch and a half material on its side then a three inch screw may not give you the support that you need. So, you know, you have that inch on the top of the screw where there’s no threads at all. So, you want to make sure that you know what you’re going to be screwing into and that the majority of your threads on the screw are holding the material that you are tying into. Okay, so if you do order the roof hooks from SunMaxx, you will get three inch screws, which is going to be suitable for rafter mounts, but if you did mount to purlins, for example, like I did, I had to replace my three inch screws, I went with shorter inch and ¾ screws to be sure my threads are mounted to my purlin. Now, there’s several different ways to mount to a roof. Five of which I mentioned here. This spanner method is where you have access to the rafters and below then you create a spanner between the rafters that you can mount your penetrations directly to the spanner. And this sort of serves the same purpose as mounting with a rail. It gives you horizontal flexibility to move back and forth and you’re not fixed to the location of your rafters. Another one is a lag bolt using flashing. Okay, the lag bolt, like I mentioned, should be at least three inches that’s going to all you to bolt directly to your rafters. Toggle bolts work. They are a little bit more cumbersome to work with and it works well if you have access to the roof below. The toggle bolt should be pretty big with a washer. Some guys are using a piece of plywood as a washer, so they’re using a four inch disk of plywood that acts as the washer for the toggle bolt and I do recommend that as well. “J” bolts have been used quite often in mounting to roofs. And basically, if you’re going to use a “J” bolt, you are fixed to the location of the rafter and you also need to have access to the rafter itself so that you know exactly where to drill and the “J” can then hook on to the bottom of the rafter. A pitch pan is one of the older methods that’s still being in use. Basically, you mount your lag bolt in through a pan that has a hole in the bottom that’s going to be filled with tar. So, it basically prevents any water penetration. Okay, mounting to rafters as you see here, the “J” bolt and the lag bolt detailed, “J” bolts are being used for, consistently for, but like I said, if you’re fixed to the location of the rafter, if you’re going to use a “J” bolt. As with the lag bolt, although with a lag bolt you can also mount in the case of metal loops, you can mount to the purlins if the purlins are made of a material that’s at least 2 x 4 inches. Okay. Using evacuated tubes, our hardware is universal, which is very important for those of you who are doing both tubes and flat plates. The hardware is interchangeable for either style collector. Okay, and as I mentioned, no matter what you should not exceed more than 48 inches between your standoffs. Okay, now flat plate flush mount, I think is probably the most aesthetically appealing system. Not to mention, as I said before, it’s the least expensive. It’s simplest to install, but in the end it looks very, very good. So, this roof being only at about a 35 degree slope would normally be situated at a 55 degree pitch for heating and I do remember running a report at 35 degrees versus 55 degrees and this client is sacrificing only about 7% of the total system outcome, total system output year round too, but mounting it flush rather than having it tilt mount. So, if you did a double bank of collectors, such as the one here with the tilt mount, there’d be a fairly extensive system supporting those collectors off of the roof and gaining only about 7% total output. Okay, so it is a very important consideration to make and understand what losses you’re going to incur if you go the flush mount versus tilt mount. Here’s an example of mounting the “T” profile directly to the roof. And I’ll show you a photo in just a minute of how the “T” profiles mount to the collectors, but those little clips that you see there, those tension clips, can be mounted either to a hanger bolt as you see in that photo or the tension clips can be mounted directly to the rail. Okay, so all of our components, as I said, are interchangeable and adaptable for just about any roof style. Okay the “T” profile, when used with the hanger bolt, is going to mount directly to the “T” profile and then your “T” profile, as you can see here, mounts directly to the collector. You see the bolt being inserted through the slot of the “T” profile and that connects directly to the stainless steel frame of the collectors. So, there’s no other components required once the “T” profile is installed on the roof. It makes for a very simple installation especially for flush mounting. Okay, and this is what the final product looks like when you use a “T” profile connected directly to the collector and then the “T” profiles connected to the clip, which is connected to a hanger bolt, which is bolted directly into a rafter with a piece of flashing, okay. And that is a done deal, guaranteed not to leak for the life of the system. Now, there’s several different strategies I want to go over now just in terms of using your vacuum heat pipes and increasing your performance. Underneath the collectors with a highly reflective roof surface, you can boost performance of these collectors and I’ve seen actual performance numbers increase anywhere from 20 to 30 percent, depending on the type of reflective surface. So, when you’re installing the evacuated tube system, which I know that a lot of you are, it’s very important that you increase the reflectivity behind those collectors. Now, this is something you can suggest to the homeowner or that you can include as part of the system installation, but nevertheless you can guarantee that your system will perform better for the life of the system by increasing the reflectivity behind the vacuum heat pipes. And I would also point out that there’s a highly reflective roof coating that Sherwin Williams makes for $35.00 a gallon that can be painted directly on metal or asphalt shingles. So, I highly recommend looking at increased reflectivity. In terms of some different types of mounting there’s, you know, ridge mount as with the one that you see on the right. This client, his house was facing 90 degrees in the wrong direction, so he decided to do a ridge mount. I would caution you that making this system mounted perpendicular to the plane of the house does really destruct the aesthetic appeal, if that’s consideration. And the added benefit in terms of performance from 90 degrees off of ideal may only be in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 percent increase performance. Okay, so you have to consider, very carefully, before you mount to a ridge, is it worth it. And check with your SunMaxx rep. Ask them to do a report at the various azimuth angles and then you’ll know exactly what value you’re going to sacrifice by mounting it along the same slope as the house. Moveable rays are not recommended, but they are possible. The reason they’re not recommended is because you have piping then instead of forming electrons you’re forming pressurized fluid, which tends to try to escape. And so the more often you move your array the more likely you’re going to have some leakage. And knowing that your sacrifices in performance are not nearly those sacrifices that you’ll see in PV systems, it’s not recommended that you design a moveable system. Okay, now in terms of ground mounting, a lot of systems, a lot of guys who really like the ground mount because they’re easily accessible, they’re easy to clean, any maintenance problems and they’re also not subject to the particular angle of inclination and orientation of the house. They can be put offsite somewhere. We usually recommend that these systems not be installed more than 150 feet away from the house because once you exceed 150 feet you begin to experience a tremendous amount pressure drop, which means bigger pump and perhaps bigger piping and bigger piping is going to mean more losses. Okay, so a general rule about the ground mounting is that you not put these mounts more than 150 feet from the house. Now, ground mounts can be pretty difficult, but in cases where it’s the only option it is certainly not impossible to put a collector just about anywhere you want. In this particular system that was recently commissioned near Cooperstown, New York, the installer chose to use a cleared approach to the collectors. So rather than having them manifold to manifold to manifold, with brass unions, they are union together, but with flexible ConnectMax piping. Okay, so small sections are used to join one collector to the next. There’s a little bit more added cost for installation, obviously digging the holes and pouring the concrete, but the homeowner had a nice suitable location on a hillside, and you can pretty much guarantee that they are at the proper orientation and proper inclination. Okay, so ground mounting on flat ground and also underneath ground is very doable. It just needs to be well thought out. Mounting collectors on a flat roof is important to know that the evacuated tubes have very little wind load. And if you notice the picture here on the left these collectors are mounted just through these concrete blocks that are setting on the roof and in the picture on the right these evacuator tube collectors are used for shading for a carport. So, flat roof mounting is very easily done and often does not even have to penetrate the roof in order to accomplish that. Here’s another example of ridge mounting where the back legs of the collectors are straddling the ridge, still facing the same direction as the house. So, we’re not perpendicular to the ridge, but we are ridge mounting it by straddling the ridge. Okay, another flat roof install one important thing I’d like to point out in terms of flat roof install, particularly in the northern climates, is snow and we recommend that you bring your collector feet off of the roof by at least 12 inches in areas that are prone to snow loads. This will keep your collectors out of the snow, obviously. Allow for movement underneath the collectors, but it’ll act as a snow fence because often, if they’re connected directly to the roof, with no movement underneath, then you’re going to see the collectors work as sort of a snow fence. And there’ll be big piles of snow that trap behind the collectors. So, bring them up at least 12 inches. Here’s another example where the owner had used the white roofing to increase performance of the collectors. Pole mounts, in the case of, on the right hand side, this single pole mount is actually functioning as a pass through for the supply and return piping as well as the support structure for the collector itself. So, this install was able to get away with a single point of penetration using a steel pole to which he passed a supply and return. The one on the left with the core reflectors, this particular homeowner did not want his collectors on the roof at all. So, the installer was able to accommodate by doing a pole. Obviously, it’s going to raise the cost up considerably. Using concrete standoffs is also recommended particularly for evacuated tubes, ground mounts. This entire collector field is not mounted to the ground at all. They are simply bolted to these concrete standoffs that act as concrete shoes, for example. And the wind load being less than what the collector weighs, by adding these blocks and bringing them up off the ground, these are off the ground 18 inches as opposed to a foot. So, they’ve exceeded what we recommended, but they’re insuring that there will be no snow buildup on the bottom of the feet. In terms of reducing your summertime production, successful mounting can accomplish that, for example with the one on the left, you see the roof that the collectors are sitting on is acting as a shade for the bottom row reflectors in the summertime. So, he’s got four collectors total, only two of which are really operational in the summer, and then as the sun drops in the sky the bottom row becomes functional, or façade mounts, like these “U” pipes. Flat plates and evacuated tubes, if you do evacuated tube façade mount it’s got to be direct flow or a “U” type collector. Okay, flat plate collectors can be façade mounted and these are typically used for heating systems where you’re producing excess energy or more energy in the winter and then the production actually drops in the summertime with a perfect 90 degree slope. Overheating in situations where you have access to the collectors, they can be covered up, in a ground mounts not very accessible on the roof, but by having a steep angle, just like the façade mount you can also reduce your production. Drain back systems need to be mounted at ¼ inch tilt per foot whether it’s a sloped roof like the one you see on the right, or a flat roof as in on the left, all the manifolds need to be mounted at the ¼ inch of slope per foot. Now, ballast systems for collectors can be concrete like this or, pardon me, or they can be a wood ballast and if you do a concrete ballast then you use the hanger bolt. Those hanger bolts that you saw previously that spread directly into the rafter can also be put into concrete and then use the machine threaded to bolt the collector feet together. And then again, there’s your clip with your “T” profile and the collector mounts directly to the “T” profile. Now, here’s a couple of pictures showing the point of penetration with it over the shed. And then with the green roof this client chose to use the rail system. Okay, the considerations you have to make again are what type of wind load would your collectors be under. Okay, with evacuated tubes you can get away with mounting your collectors to the roof decking with some washers and big washers underneath. So, you’re basically connecting your collectors to the plywood that is then connected to the rafters. Not recommended for flat plates however, because of the wind load. The rail system just makes installation a little bit easier because you’re not fixed to the rafter location you can mount your rails and then mount your collectors and then slide them down as you see fit. Okay, a couple of important things I’d just like to bring up in terms of mounting strategy considerations. The ConnectMaxx hardware is universal. And so it’s universal in the sense that it mounts to flat plates as well as pitched roof, sloped roof, ridge mount, façade mount, cantilever, rail system versus not rail system. There’s virtually no roof that this ConnectorMaxx hardware cannot be incorporated. And so it’s very important that you locate your sales rep and understand what you’re trying to accomplish and they will include the most appropriate ConnectMaxx hardware for whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish. And it’s all put together with a single Allen wrench, which is included as well. I’m more than happy to respond to anybody’s questions that you have. And I encourage you to join us again next week. Okay Dave, one second I’ll answer that, one moment. So, again, feel free to email me if you have any particular questions check our solarwebinars.com for archives of all the webinars. I think we’re up to, actually I don’t even know, 16, 17, 18 webinars at this point. So, we’re giving quite a lot of information to you guys as quickly as possible. If you have any suggestions for webinar topics that you’d like to see I am definitely interested in doing that as today I’m doing another schedule for the third quarter of 11, so please do take advantage of that. Send me emails with your questions and I’ll be happy to respond. Now, in terms of wind load, before we close, the wind load for flat plate collectors, the hardware is rated for 110 mph winds. Okay, so we have passed and rated our hardware at 110 mph winds. It’s apparently in testing right now for 160 mph winds. According to the mathematics that we’ve used it will pass the 160 mph test, but we don’t have that official stamp of approval yet. But, we do have a rating at 110 mph winds for both flat plate and evacuator tube. As you know evacuator tubes suffer from much less wind load than flat plates and require less material to connect to the roof. However, since our ConnectMaxx hardware is universal we’re using both flat plate and evacuated tubes for this hardware, they are, in the case of evacuated tubes, the hardware is probably well exceeds what’s required in order to hold it down in, you know, hurricane force winds. Okay, well there you have it. I’m going to officially end the webinar. Don, I went with flat plates on my house because of a radiant floor where I needed extremely low temperature heat load and it is also a question of aesthetes in terms of my house design. And so that’s a very good question and it’s not an easy answer. I went back and forth with flat plates versus evacuated tubes and it really just came down to what is most applicable for my particular application. Okay, thank you all take care and have a great Monday and I wish you the best of all available sunshine. Take care.

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