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The goal of this project is to demonstrate thermal solar power heating
and cooling of an energy-efficient building (the ME building),
augmenting the standard air-conditioning system. Our anticipation was that
the energy costs on maintaining the building temperature would be reduced by
20% or more, and the CO2 emissions associated with heating/cooling
our building would drop by 100 tons per year. The project construction was
completed in 2007 and received many important upgrades in 2010, and now we are assessing the improvement of the overall solar thermal system performance. We
hope that our original estimates of the system performance will prove to be
too conservative.
The UNM Solar Testbed Project was funded by the State of New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department in February 2006. The conceptual design for the project was approved in April 2006. Read about our project in UNM Today, April 2006: Engineers Re-Commit to Solar Energy More news coverage in New Mexico Business Weekly. The Daily Lobo coverage of the original project (2006) and interview. "A long time coming," Daily Lobo, 2008. Solar Energy Storage Part of Smart-Grid Research Under Way in New Mexico, The Solar Home and Business Journal, February 2011. About our logo... It's the skeleton of an Edaphosaurus, a reptile with what some paleontologists argue is a solar panel on its back, an adaptation evolved in response to global climate change during the Permian period. |