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Solar Cooling and Storage System from Urban Energy Australasia

The Wyong Milk Factory is a reconditioned milk factory now acting as a health and wellbeing retreat. Wyong had quite considerable air conditioning loads and wanted to utilise 12 evacuated tube collectors that had previously been used for heating the facility in the winter. Urban Energy Australasia was commissioned to have a look at the current system, compile an energy audit and recommend a suitable system for cooling the facility.

The system decided on was a solar (thermal) cooling system and storage system. This system uses the heat generated by the solar thermal collectors in a high efficiency absorption chiller to produce a cooling effect. Solar cooling in this facility was the ideal solution as the most cooling is required at exactly the same time as the evacuated tube solar collectors are at their most efficient solar collection capabilities.

Urban energy have assisted the Milk Factory by providing an efficient, low maintenance and running cost, high life expectancy solar cooling system. This Solar Cooling system was the first commercial scale solar cooling system in Australia.

Objectives:

To effectively and efficiently solar cool a commercial area.
To utilise previously installed evacuated tube panels in the summer.
To reduce the cost of air conditioning for the building.

System Design:

Standalone solar and storage solar cooling system - The basic principle of the solar cooling system is as follows:

Heat from the sun is collected by the 12 evacuated tube solar collectors. This heat is stored in 4 x 580L solar stratified Latento storage tanks.

An Invensor absorption chiller is connected to the heat exchanger coils inside the Latento units. The Absorption chiller uses the entropy difference of the heat inside the Tanks and a secondary circuit to create a significant quantity of cooling water for the Milk Factory.

This cooling water is passed through a water/ air heat exchanger to cool the areas required.

Outcome:

Urban Energy successfully designed, installed and commissioned this system, the first commercial scale solar cooling system in Australia.

The installation process operated smoothly, in a timely manner within budget costing.

The system has been operating successfully for over 2 years and has saved a significant quantity of greenhouse gasses for the offset cooling costs of the facility.

The Wyong Milk factory continues to operate as a health and wellbeing resort which the patrons can rest easy that the Milk Factory is doing their bit to help save the environment.

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