SOLAR TRANSITION. Reprinted from Willamette Valley Observer, Oct. 31-No'v. .13, 1975, p. 8-10. WILLAMETTE VALLEY OBSERVER: How important a place in the forseeable future do you assign to solar power? • . REYNOLDS: First of all, l 1thinkwe need to make a really important distinction. When I-talk about using solar energy now, I'm talking about making heat with it, not electricity. That's fundamental.' WVO: So it's actually more of a conserva.f:ion factor at the moment? R: It is, in that it would simply shift kilowatt hours that are' now being used in shamefully low ways, like beating water and heating air, •to doing jobs like lighting lights and rurining motors, which it does very well. I think the prospect for solar heating is excellent. It would be Superb except that die whole thing has become politicized, and we're seeing in Washington month after month of fighting and squabbling about who's going to do what. If they'd finally get something enacted ·and signed, lik~ tax credits for people who put solar systems on their homes... . , The conversation then turned to the Henry Mathew house outside of Coos Bay. Mathew constructed a solar•home in 1965, long before it became popular, and his innovative method has been the wonder of the experts since he was "discovered," after some detective work by· Reynolds following up an obscure reference in Popufar Mechanics. WVO: How practical is the model that He!)ry Mathew created? Is it a good prototype? . R: _Yes, an excellent prototype. If you read the literature on solar heat, generally you'll be told that your collector, for best wintertime performance, should be placed at an angle to the ground equal to the latitude at which the house sits, plus 1 S to 20 degrees. For us that gets us to about 65 degrees or so, which is a pretty steep roof. _ What Henry did was to simply do some very, very simple experiments beforehand, and come to the conclusion that a 90 degree tilthis is actually 82 degrees-with a horizontal reflective surface in front of it-would be even better, and that's what he built.... ' There are two things we ,will always be indebted to Henry for. One, he actually built a solar house, which actually works, and actually in Oregon, which is one of the worst places in the country. And the other thing is that he came up with the vertical co-Uector/horizontal reflector combination, which is quite unique. WVO: He gets about 80 per cent of hi~ heat from his solar system, doesn't he? ' R: Our study of his house last winter, on a detailed basis month-bymonth, indicated 85 per cent of his space heating came from solar. WVO: Can you generalize from that to say that of the total EWEB power load that's used for heating and cooling, 85 per cent coiµd be diverted to other uses through solar systems? R: I think 85 per cent in Oregon is ambitious at the moment. The thing is, right now most solar collectors for spac~ heating purposes operate, at about 35-40 per c.ent efficiency; chat is, of the solar energy that falls on the collector's surface, only abot 40 per cent gets turned into useable heat.... (But) I'm reading about manufacturers who claim that th~y are getting SO per cent'right now. Well, heck, all we need is those things being commercially available, and 80 per cent in this state .isn't too terribly far off. WVO: So it is possible to get 85 per cent of your needs met? R: Oh, yes, it's just that right now you'd have to build so much collector . .. I mean, Henry Mathew has 1600 sq. ft. of heated floor area, and he has almost 800 feet of collector.. .. Good heavens, you start Nov 1975 RAIN Page 21 thinking about just the visual impact Qf 800 feet of collector, that's pretty enormous on most houses. So our aim, really, is to get the collectors smaller, and the percentage of service ~hey give the house J { . larger. WVO: Is this situation at all changed when talking·about other than single-family residences? R: Yes, multi-family residences generally are a.better bet, because you tend to lose less heat .. . they generally have shared floors or shared walls, which means that for the amount of floor area you're living iri, you don't have as much heat being lost. Therefore, a smaller collector could deal with your load. Also, the latger your storage tank . gets, up to a·point, the more efficient it is, in terms of the ratio of_ the area of the skin, which loses heat, to the volume of the tank. WVO: And presumably it's even m_ore so with a large office building. R: Now, the only problem there is that ~hat gets tne into another whole bag of mine, and that is too much electric lighting that these commercial institutions are so fond of installing. They put so much light in _their buildings that they never need. Their problem is getting rid of heat. We've got schools in this town that need a~r conditioning at 21 degrees outside. We've got to change our ways. When we get rid of this idea that you have to pour light all over everything all the time, . then I think that using solar energy to make up the h~at deficiency in ct>mmercial builqings will be a little more attra.ctive than it is now. WVO: What are the immediate steps toward .making a shift in this area? R: In terms of the components being available, thatfs probably not a problem. There are a lot of people getting irito the producing end._ We need a lot more professionals to help design the systems. We need architects and engineers who are knowledgeable about solar systems. That's one of the bottlenecks. And we need low interest loans made available for people to make this investment. WVO: EWEB and the group on campus are doing.experiments both th¢oretically and practically? What are some of those? R: Most of the the.oretical work is going on at the University. What EWEB is doing is a fairly simple experiment in testing collectors. You know, the amount of money that the board authorized is peanuts. I mean, $7000 to build collectors and test them is not much .money at all. • ' So what EWEB did was_to build 8 or 10 collectors, essentially identical, which are oriented in different ways. Some face southeast, some south, some southwest, they even have one facing north, just as an indication of, if literally you oilly had the north side of a roof, could you expect any performance at all? They're tryiqg different angles of tilt, as well as different directions they face. It's a super low-budget job-very ingenious. . . . It's also inadequate, a lot more could be learned if more were invested in a moni- •toring system, let's put it that way. WVO: What is the University group doing? R: There will be testing of various collector/reflector combinations here at the University. EWEB's effort mostly so far has been in collector ·orientation. Whereas I think most of our work will be in homing in on the collector/reflector relationships. Also, the U is doing the job of taking solar radiation readings, which isn't as simple as it sounds, particularly if you want',o get direct sun readings as well as overall readings. There are only a couple of places in the country that are getting , direct sun readings, and this will be one of them, once they finally get the pyroheliometer hooked up on the roof of th.e Physics Building. That's funded research. Then, the architecture·and physics students have built on their own time and with donated materials this retrofitted Agate Street house, and are finishing that this term.... We on·the faculty have essentially stepped back from that and thought that it would be good if students could illustrate that they could put this together, and they-have. • WVO: So that can be studied as a working model? R: Yes, and it uses the Henry Mathew vertical collector/horizontal reflector combination. So Henry's influence is spreading. Tflere's another student effort too, and that is that some students in this department (architecture) are building-~hat is called a passive solar system, and these are very exciting, because they're so low tec·h. •E~entially what you do is you put a highly thermal absorbing mass-granite would be ideal, but practically you're talking about maybe solid _concrete-a fairly tJ)ick wall right behind a sheet of southfacing glass. Sun comes through the glass, warms the concrete, and you have a little opening at the top and b.ottom so that air can circulate up through that space. . . . . WVO: What's the ne~ step? Is EWEB going to become involved in helping people build these things? Or h~w is that going to work? • continued oa page 22
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz