Solar Thermal Sizing, Modeling and Verification for an Army Barracks

The US Army requires that projects install solar thermal arrays to provide 30% of domestic hot water load when there is an economic payback. There are challenges, however, improperly sizing a system to meet these design loads and verifying that the system meets the requirements is not required. This presentation looks at an Army barracks that specified an array that would meet 70% of the domestic load but encountered many problems during commissioning and the first 6 months of operation. Lessons learned and recommendations for future projects are presented.