Estimation of Energy Savings From Community Scale Solar Water Heating in Los Angeles County explores, through a series of case studies, the extent to which community scale solar water heating systems, designed for residential structures in Los Angeles County and constructed from currently available technology, can displace natural gas for domestic water heating. The effects of policy, urban form, and building characteristics on the performance of solar water heating systems, as well as community scale solar water heating’s potential to reduce emissions from the residential housing sector, are discussed herein.
Three public and three private residential developments were selected as case studies for community scale solar water heating. These six cases were drawn from the approximately 19,000 “energy communities” in Los Angeles County, chosen to represent a cross-section of housing stock and development patterns common in in the county, and for different levels of suitability for solar water heating. The performance of and energy savings from solar water heating systems on each of these properties were evaluated using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s System Advisor Model. The results of the system simulations reveal how building characteristics and hot water demand affect the performance of community scale solar water heating systems.
The case study site’s system simulations show that residential developments with community scale solar water heating can reach site-wide solar fractions of 20-80 percent, depending on the characteristics of the site’s residential buildings and their inhabitants. While the results of the case studies indicate that community scale solar water heating is viable as an emissions reduction technology, side-by-side comparison with other water heating technologies is necessary to determine optimality.
