Canadian ideas for greener living

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A 52 House Solar Community

There is no doubt that this news may seem a little strange to be coming out of Alberta, ya know with the whole oil sands/companies invading the province, but a solar powered community has been built in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada.

Titled the Drake Landing Community, there are 800 solar panels located throughout the community on garage roofs, and they produce 1.5 mega-watts of thermal power during a summer day and supply heat to the district heating system.

Heres how it works:

its a 52-house subdivision to have space and water heating supplied by solar energy
Solar energy is captured year round by the 800-panel garage mounted arrays
There is a combination of seasonal and short-term thermal storage (STTS) facilitate collection and storage of solar energy in the summer for use in space heating in winter
Borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) is an in-ground heat sink for seasonal energy storage
Short-term thermal storage (STTS) tanks are the central hub for heat movement between collectors, district loop (DL)/houses, and (BTES)
DL moves heat from the STTS to the house

Okay so not the simplest explanation but heres the bottom line, a full on 52 house subdivision that runs on solar power! Come on’ right? It’s great to see Alberta making some positive moves to help fight against the impact the oil sands are having on that amazing province. Click here and here to learn more about this amazing community and company.

Keep it Green,

Paul

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Science, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “A 52 House Solar Community”

Karie Granada says:

January 29, 2010 at 6:56 pm

I don’t usually stop to leave comments, but it is hard to find good information on this topic today. You did a fantastic job in this post and I think I’ll check out your other articles as well. Keep writing!
Sherilyn Troupe says:

March 30, 2010 at 4:28 pm

Love the blog. I’ve been creating solar panels for small businesses for months now and doing pretty well… Lucky I found this place.