Government & Military
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Reduce budgets, create jobs and go green! A tall order? Perhaps. But government and military corps of engineers have been snapping to – helped, in part, by the use of SolarWall® technologies. The U.S. military has been exploring the use of renewable energy for a number of years. SolarWall is a natural choice because it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to incorporate in either new construction, or in retrofit situations. Given that a lot of military buildings already have metal cladding, it makes both the decision and installation easier. This has proven to be the case in all of the military projects SolarWall has worked on to date. For example, in Colorado, 17,400 square feet of SolarWall panels have been installed on a helicopter hangar and a vehicle maintenance building at Fort Carson. In Upstate New York, 39 walls on twentyseven of the buildings are being retrofitted at Fort Drum to include SolarWall systems. Included in the project are warehouses, motor pools and vehicle maintenance shops. In all, over 110,000 square feet of wall area will be covered. Since each square foot saves 75 kWh/year of thermal energy, Fort Drum will be saving over 8 million kilowatt hours of energy each and every year. That’s 8 million units that don’t have to be imported from elsewhere – and 8 million units saved in energy costs! In the process of making the buildings more energy efficient, jobs were also being created – something that happens every time a SolarWall system is installed. At Fort Drum alone, the project resulted in 10 man years’ worth of new jobs. Military and Municipalities getting fresh... air that is. Managers of municipal buildings and government installations are as concerned with enhancing air quality as they are with improving the bottom line. At Fort Drum, the engineers were seeking to improve the ventilation and indoor air quality as much as they were looking to save on energy costs. The same holds true in Fort Carson where the SolarWall system helps to combat the fume-related challenges inherent with maintaining diesel-fueled helicopters and other military vehicles. In both cases, thanks to their SolarWall installations, these base buildings now have plenty of fresh air. When the Manitoba Housing Authority needed to replace an outdated corridor ventilation system for a twenty-storey public housing complex, they looked at various options to cost effectively solve their need for good ventilation around the clock. Robert Bisson, former mechanical engineer with Manitoba Housing Authority explains, “We needed to solve the ventilation problem and looked at different things to reduce the cost impact of the project, including SolarWall. We did some analysis using RETscreen software and made the decision to go with it. Once we had a business case for the project and received approval for it, the SolarWall system went up well and has worked out better than I thought it would in terms of performance. We monitor the temperatures and in the winter, the temperature off the SolarWall picks up by almost 50ºF – it definitely exceeds my expectations.” The annual energy cost savings aren’t bad either! Hot heads vanquished. Not only do SolarWall systems provide a healthier ventilation environment, they create a more comfortable working climate, too. In large buildings with high ceilings, it’s often hard to keep the temperature comfortably constant throughout the work area, and employees alternate between shivering and sweltering. Thanks to SolarWall, air temperature stratifications can be eliminated, further reducing heating costs, and increasing employee comfort. (Please see the Industrial Fan and Ventilation insert for details.) Government and military sewage and water treatment plants, supply depots, community centers, bus and vehicle maintenance garages, hangars, warehouses, offices and the like are all ideal candidates to benefit from the installation of a SolarWall system. GOVERNMENT & MILITARY

Canada Conserval Engineering Inc. 200 Wildcat Road, Toronto, ON M3J 2N5 T: 416.661.7057 F: 416.661.7146 E: info@solarwall.com W: www.solarwall.com U.S.A. Conserval Systems Inc. 4242 Ridge Lea Rd., Suite 28, Buffalo, New York 14226 T: 716.835.4903 F: 716.835.4904 E: solarwallUSA@solarwall.com W: www.solarwall.com Lookin’ good! The old joke about “practical” being military code for ugly and uncomfortable is a relic of the past. Today, the Corps of Engineers works hard to create buildings that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are practical. The Fort Drum and Fort Carson projects are no...