Vermont Green Offices has been transformed into a working solar lab over the past five years. The building is a passive solar building built in 1980 with active solar features added in 2005. It has both a battery-based and direct utility-intertied photovoltaic (PV) systems which are the infrastructure needed for an AC-coupled microgrid application.
The solar lab has a variety of deferrable loads that can be used for peak shaving experiments and model validation. It has an electric water heater, relays to control all lighting on the first floor, refrigerators and relays to control the natural ventilation fans. It has electronic sub metering for the renewable energy systems.
The atrium area of the solar lab is low temperature solar furnace as configured. Temperatures of 50°C are routine during sunny days which helps with long term reliability testing of our equipment.
Draker’s solar lab has installed a state-of-the-art Sentalis™ 1000 monitoring platform. This includes the Sentalis™ 1000 base station, Draker/Blue Oak smart combiner boxes and CB HUB. The AC-coupled battery storage has a battery monitoring system installed that needs to be connected to the Sentalis™ 1000 base station.
Improvements contingent on funding include solar lab upgrades to Vermont Green Offices including energy sub metering, daylighting controls and enhanced natural ventilation controls.
It is anticipated that financing will allow the installation of solar thermal technologies to this mix for the purpose of energy generation in the move towards a net zero commercial building and research and test prototype smart monitoring and control systems for solar thermal applications.
Vermont Green Offices’ main tenant, Draker Labs, provides 3rd party monitoring for commercial scale renewable energy projects all over the world. The company has substantial experience in monitoring nearly all forms of renewable energy and has the knowledge needed for system control. The company has a ‘Net Energy’ package it offers customers to show the renewable energy systems’ generation in the context of the total system load and has interfaced directly with utility meters in both California (PG&E) and Texas (CPS Energy).
Vermont Green Offices’ solar laboratory relies upon a number of innovative green energy features.
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