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White Mountain Energy Project (WMEP) |
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WMEP
NEWS...
WMRS
turns on Sunny Boy inverters December 6, sending power
to Southern California Edison and turning our meter backward!
Based
on 2 months of data, we
now predict that winter and summer solar output from the Pace Lab
roof will be comparable; about 50 KWh per sunny day. See chart (excel
file)
Barcroft
Field Station switches to solar!
In late July we "flipped the switch" and turned off the
diesel generator for the first time this summer. The quiet was deafening!
Since then we have been running the station with about 75% solar/battery
power and 25% diesel. The next stage of the project (summer 2008)
is to install the Capstone C-30 Microturbine Generator and heat
exchanger.
Other
news stories:
5...roof installation
4...panel assembly
3...hydronic inst.
2...energy woes
1...$255,000 award
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Inverter system in Barcroft DEG (Distributed Energy Generation)
room. Two units on left are 5000 watt "Sunny Boy" inverters,
which invert the DC output from the rooftop solar panels into split
single phase 240V AC current. The four black units are "Outback
VFX3648" units which are slaved together to produce split single
phase 240V AC current also. The outback inverters produce electrical
output as a type of uninterruptible power supply, drawing off the
"Hawker 6-85-21 SCO1" batteries (foreground in green)
when there is no input power, and charging the batteries when solar,
line, or generator electric power is available. The Sunny Boy inverters
automatically synchronize with the power coming out of the Outback
inverters.
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PROJECT
SUMMARY
The
goal of the Whi;te Mountain Energy Project is to improve energy quality
and reliability, increase safety, reduce costs, and test innovative technologies
at WMRS field stations. The first phase of this project will be to assess
the energy situation at the upper field station at Barcroft (and secondarily,
Crooked Creek). The current energy situation at Barcroft is problematic
for several reasons.
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The power delivery system is unreliable. Reliable, clean power is critical
to the scientific aspects of running the station, and in winter, for
safety. see news story above for details in 2006
- Electricity bills
are very large, totaling approximately $15,000 in 2002. Much of the
electricity is used to heat buildings. The frigid winters at Barcroft
necessitate an efficient heating system with backup systems for safety.
- The power distribution
system from the buried power lines run independently to four distribution
points. Running backup power from the main station out to these points
is not currently supported. See Barcroft
Power Distribution diagram for details
- There are certain
users of the station who require 3-phase current. This is not currently
available.
To carry out this
project, WMRS has teamed up with Engineering Professor Scott Samuelsen
and students in the Advanced Power and
Energy Program(APEP) at UC Irvine. To date the project team has monitored
power consumption at Barcroft and Crooked creek, analyzed energy needs
with monitoring and simulation, researched energy alternatives, and set
up a test bed on the Barcroft Pace Lab roof for assessing the power potential
of two types of solar photovoltaic panels. Some of their recommendations
are shown in the "Phase
1" WMEP schematic and the "WMEP
Electrical and Controls Schematic." The team has also developed
a phased strategy for implementing recommendations which allows for incremental
improvements depending upon funding and time constraints. In
January 2006, the Field Stations and Marine Laboratories (FSML) Improvement
Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $255,000 to fund
the core systems of the WMEP, including a hydronic heating system, backup
microturbine generators, and a solar photovoltaic system ( see WMEP
FSML web page for highlights of this proposal). Soon, WMRS and APEP
will apply to the California Energy Commission for funds to upgrade the
environmental energy systems capacity (e.g. wind and solar), and to the
Department of Defense for funds to install a monitoring and controls test
bed for testing new energy generation technologies and control systems
at high elevation.
RESOURCE
DIAGRAMS AND DOCUMENTS
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The original team...L to R John Smiley, Jim
Maclay, Ryan Gaylord, Phil Pister, Scott Samuelsen. Jim Meacham
not present. |
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