FOREWORD

The Community Systems Program of the Division of Buildings and Community Systems, Office of Energy Conservation, of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), is concerned with conserving energy and scarce fuels through new methods of satisfying the energy needs of American Communities. These programs are designed to develop innovative ways of combining current, emerging, and advanced technologies into Integrated Community Energy Systems (ICES) that could furnish any, or all, of the energy-using services of a community. The key goals of the Community System Program then, are to identify, evaluate, develop, demonstrate, and deploy energy systems and community designs that will optimally meet the needs of various communities.

The overall Community Systems effort is divided into three main areas: (a) Integrated Systems, (b) Community Planning & Design, and (c) Implementation Mechanisms. The Integrated Systems work is intended to develop the technology component and subsystem data base, system analysis methodology, and evaluations of various system conceptual designs which will help those interested in applying integrated systems to communities. Also included in this program is an active participation in demonstrations of ICES. The Community Planning & Design effort is designed to develop concepts, tools, and methodologies that relate urban form and energy utilization. This may then be used to optimize the design and operation of community energy systems. Implementation Mechanisms activities will provide data and develop strategies to accelerate the acceptance and implementation of community energy systems and energy-conserving community designs.

This report, prepared by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is part of a series of Technology Evaluations of the performance and costs of components and subsystems which may be included in community energy systems and is part of the Integrated Systems effort. The reports are intended to provide sufficient data on current, emerging and advanced technologies so that they may be used by consulting engineers, architect/engineers, planners, developers, and others in the development of conceptual designs for community energy systems. Furthermore, sufficient detail is provided so that calculational models of each component may be devised for use in computer codes for the design of Integrated Systems. Another task of the Technology Evaluation activity is to devise calculational models which will provide part-load performance and costs of components suitable for use as subroutines in the computer codes being developed to analyze community energy systems. These will be published as supplements to the main Technology Evaluation reports.

It should be noted that an extensive data base already exists in technology evaluation studies completed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for the Modular Integrated Utility System (HIUS) Program sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These studies, however, were limited in that they were: (a) designed to characterize mainly off-the-shelf technologies up to 1973, (b) size limited to meet community limitations, (c) not designed to augment the development of computer subroutines, (d) intended for use as general information for city officials and keyed to residential communities, and (e) designed specifically for EUD-MIUS needs. The present documents are founded on the ORNL data base but are more technically oriented and are designed to be upgraded periodically to reflect changes in current, emerging, and advanced technologies. Furthermore, they will address the complete range of component sizes and their application to residential, commercial, light industrial, and institutional communities. The overall intent of these documents, however, is not to be a complete documentation of a given technology but will provide sufficient data for conceptual design application by a technically knowledgeable individual. Data presentation is essentially in two forms. The main report includes a detailed description or the part-load performance, capital, operating and maintenance costs, availability, sizes, environmental effects, material and energy balances, and reliability of each component along with appropriate reference material for further study. Also included are concise data sheets which may be removed for filing in a notebook which will be supplied to interested individuals and organizations. The data sheets are colored and are perforated for ease of removal. Thus, the data sheets can be upgraded periodically while the report itself will be updated much less frequently.

Each document was reviewed by several individuals from industry, research and development, utility, and consulting engineering organizations and the resulting reports will, hopefully, be of use to those individuals involved in community energy systems