Solar Heat Recovery at USGS

The US Geological Survey Headquarters is a 1 million square foot laboratory in Northern Virginia. The campus includes several buildings, housing laboratories, computer facilities, and a separate heating and cooling plant. American Solar has installed several ground mounted emergency generator heating systems, constructed a building with solar heating roof and walls over 2 large emergency generators, and installed a solar heat recovery system on two metal walls.

The wall heat recovery system harvests solar heated air from 35 year old black metal walls. The walls enclosed the boiler room and solar heated air is delivered into the boiler room, to help preheat boiler combustion air.

As part of this solar project, American Solar designed and installed a heat recovery system that pulled heat from the top of the boiler room to the floor to increase boiler air intake temperatures. American Solar also evaluated the area of outside air intake louvers installed during the original construction in 1973 and recommended the installation of moveable dampers to reduce winter cooling of the space and excessive steam based heating.

View graph of solar air temperatures for USGS

For further information, contact ASI at 703-425-0923 or by email at info@americansolar.com.