Crestone Solar School
Retrofit means working with an existing building, which is to say under some constraint. You don’t get to start from scratch. This San Luis Valley Solar Thermal Retrofit Power Point Presentation is about heat and water heating in a home located in Conejos County, Colorado.
A Passive Solar Manufactured House
We own 35 acres of land in the Ghost Mine Ranch subdivision on the west side of the San Luis Valley, 8 miles north of Del Norte. The climate of the San Luis Valley is cold but very sunny, making it suitable for a solar heated house that uses solar generated electricity. The current weather is measured by our weather station. Our manufactured house is set on a basement of passive solar design, which collects sunlight and stores energy to heat the house. It is off the utility grid except for propane delivery and wireless communications. The Guerdon manufactured house was built with R45 insulation in the ceiling, but otherwise it is little different from other mobile homes built to HUD construction standards. Its windows are not optimized for solar gain, and are not particularly numerous on the south side. However, the south side of the basement is covered with windows which collect solar energy that is stored in concrete basement walls and gravel under the slab. Heat from the basement is circulated into the house through a system of vents and a computer-controlled fan. We have measured the solar heating performance of the design. During the 2005-2006 heating season the backup furnace ran for only 34 hours. A poster (PDF format) presented at the Joint CU/NREL Energy Symposium (October 3, 2006) describes the solar design and performance of the system.
Slides (PDF format) from a building systems seminar describe the design process, efficiency and cost effectiveness.
General Information:
Definitions
Solar power (also known as solar energy) is the technology of obtaining usable energy from the light of the sun.....Wikiepdia
Net metering is a state level electricity policy for consumers who own "qualifying facilities," which are generally smaller...Wikiepdia
Carbon credits are a tradable permit scheme. They provide a way to reduce...Wikiepdia
Passive Adobe is a natural building material mixed from sand, clay,...Wikiepdia
Passive solar technologies convert sunlight into usable heat, cause air-movement for...Wikiepdia
Trombe wall is a sun-facing wall built from material that can act as a thermal ...Wikiepdia
Thermal mass, in the most general sense, is any mass that absorbs and holds heat. In ...Wikiepdia
Active solar technologies are employed to convert solar energy into usable...Wikiepdia
Solar hot water panel is a solar water heater that uses ... Wikiepdia
Photovoltaic array is a linked collection of photovoltaic ... Wikiepdia
Energy conservation is decreasing the quantity of energy used while...Wikiepdia
Renewable Energy is energy derived from resources that are...Wikiepdia
Resources
Department of Energy
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/
Check out a one-minute animated video that shows how a solar cell converts sunlight into electricity: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/video/pv3.mov or http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/video/solarcell2.mpg
American Solar Energy Society
http://www.ases.org/land.htm?gclid=CPm8tqmnjowCFRVdYQodmWWG6Q
National Renewable Energy Laboratory-Innovation for Our Energy Future 
Map-Courtesy of NREL.
*The units in the legend on the map are in kWh/m2/day
