Publications

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Copper has many fine qualities that make it a useful material. It is highly conductive of both heat and electricity, is ductile and workable, and reasonably resistant to corrosion. Because of these advantages, the solar water heating industry has been using it since the mid-1970s as the material of choice for collectors, the fundamental component of a solar water heating system. In most cases copper has performed flawlessly, but in some situations it has been known to fail. Pitting corrosion is the usual failure mode, but erosion can also occur. In 2000 Sandia National Laboratories and the Copper Development Association were asked to analyze the appearance of pin-hole leaks in solar collector units installed in a housing development in Arizona, and in 2002 Sandia analyzed a pitting corrosion event that destroyed a collector system at Camp Pendleton. This report includes copies of the reports and accounts of these corrosion failures, and provides a bibliography with references to many papers and articles that might be of benefit to the solar community. It consolidates in a single source information that has been accumulated at Sandia relative to copper corrosion, especially as it relates to solar water heaters.

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This report describes a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District (SRP) and Sandia National Laboratories to jointly develop advanced methods of controlling distributed energy resources (DERs) that may be located within SRP distribution systems. The controls must provide a standardized interface to allow plug-and-play capability and should allow utilities to take advantage of advanced capabilities of DERs to provide a value beyond offsetting load power. To do this, Sandia and SRP field-tested the IEC 61850-7-420 DER object model (OM) in a grid environment, with the goal of validating whether the model is robust enough to be used in common utility applications. The diesel generator OM tested was successfully used to accomplish basic genset control and monitoring. However, as presently constituted it does not enable plug-and-play functionality. Suggestions are made of aspects of the standard that need further development and testing. These problems are far from insurmountable and do not imply anything fundamentally unsound or unworkable in the standard.

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The Salt River Project (SRP), in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Energy Laboratories, Inc. (ELI), collaborated to develop, test, and evaluate an advanced solar water-heating product for new homes. SRP and SNL collaborated under a Department of Energy Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), with ELI as SRP's industry partner. The project has resulted in the design and development of the Roof Integrated Thermal Siphon (RITH) system, an innovative product that features complete roof integration, a storage tank in the back of the collector and below the roofline, easy installation by homebuilders, and a low installed cost. SRP's market research guided the design, and the laboratory tests conducted at SNL provided information used to refine the design of field test units and indicated that the RITH concept is viable. ELI provided design and construction expertise and is currently configured to manufacture the units. This final report for the project provides all of the pertinent and available materials connected to the project including market research studies, the design features and development of the system, and the testing and evaluation conducted at SNL and at a model home test site in Phoenix, Arizona.

A growing recognition exists in companies worldwide that, when employees leave, they take with them valuable knowledge that is difficult and expensive to recreate. The concern is now particularly acute as the large ''baby boomer'' generation is reaching retirement age. A new field of science, Knowledge Continuity Management (KCM), is designed to capture and catalog the acquired knowledge and wisdom from experience of these employees before they leave. The KCM concept is in the final stages of being adopted by the Energy, Infrastructure, and Knowledge Systems Center and a program is being applied that should produce significant annual cost savings. This report discusses how the Center can use KCM to mitigate knowledge loss from employee departures, including a concise description of a proposed plan tailored to the Center's specific needs and resources.

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This report documents the investigation regarding the failure of CPVC piping that was used to connect a solar hot water system to standard plumbing in a home. Details of the failure are described along with numerous pictures and diagrams. A potential failure mechanism is described and recommendations are outlined to prevent such a failure.

Because of the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels and the corresponding release of carbon to the environment, the global energy future is complex. Some of the consequences may be politically and economically disruptive, and expensive to remedy. For the next several centuries, fuel requirements will increase with population, land use, and ecosystem degradation. Current or projected levels of aggregated energy resource use will not sustain civilization as we know it beyond a few more generations. At the same time, issues of energy security, reliability, sustainability, recoverability, and safety need attention. We supply a top-down, qualitative model--the surety model--to balance expenditures of limited resources to assure success while at the same time avoiding catastrophic failure. Looking at U.S. energy challenges from a surety perspective offers new insights on possible strategies for developing solutions to challenges. The energy surety model with its focus on the attributes of security and sustainability could be extrapolated into a global energy system using a more comprehensive energy surety model than that used here. In fact, the success of the energy surety strategy ultimately requires a more global perspective. We use a 200 year time frame for sustainability because extending farther into the future would almost certainly miss the advent and perfection of new technologies or changing needs of society.

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