When natural gas shortages developed for Colorado Springs, the community saw its problems as an opportunity to put results of

solar energy research to some practical tests

24 MOSAIC July/August 1975

In June 28, 1973, the fastest growing city in America got shocking news: It wasn't going

to get any more natural gas than it was already getting, and it might even have to make do with less. In Colorado Springs, where generations of residents had warded off frigid, windy winters by burning cheap natural gas, the prospect was chilling.

The news that production from the region's gas fields was tapering off hit the area at a time when the city had barely enough gas available to serve existing customers. The City Council, which also acts as Board of Directors of Colorado Springs' municipal utilities

(water, gas, electricity, waste water), im­mediately declared a moratorium on new gas-fueled construction.

Predictably, in the following months the previously booming homebuilding industries slumped. The slowdown, triggered by the moratorium, was sus­tained later by the nationwide evapora­tion of mortgage money in late 1973 and 1974.

Nestled against the Rockies, the Colo­rado Springs metropolitan region of 275,000 people had been averaging nearly 13 percent growth per year; that pres­sure for growth will surely resume.

What happens then? What has, in fact, happened already?

The story that follows shows how one community mobilized its people and in­stitutions to apply technology—at a rate far greater than usual—to an emerging problem.

Buying time The city's second response to the bad

news from its gas supplier, Colorado Interstate Gas, was to authorize con­struction of a propane/air "peaking" facility to augment the natural gas sup­ply on those especially cold days when gas demand peaks. As a result of that action, the city has several million gal­lons of propane stored at two recently completed mixing plants east of the city.

MOSAIC July/August 1975 25

That, plus the temporary slowdown in new housing demand, has sustained Colorado Springs two years beyond the gas moratorium. The city still has enough gas for the equivalent of 5,000 to 7,000 new houses. But that's not a lot compared to the 9,500 permits for residential gas that were issued in 1972 alone.

The propane plants were obviously a stop-gap measure, and the city can't put any more propane into its gas supply without unbalancing the system. So at the same time the city was building the propane mixing plants, it began to assess the energy resources it could mobilize to meet longer term needs.

The most plentiful fuel available is coal, which is already used to generate most of Colorado Springs' electricity. That electricity, of course, could meet the demand for heating, but at a very high cost compared to what the region is used to. The city, which now operates two plants in the city and has purchased a site out of town for a third plant, knows it will eventually have to expand its electrical generating capacity. But the cost of building a new plant is very high, and the cost of raising the neces­sary money through the sale of revenue bonds is especially high now. The city would benefit from any possible delays in building new plants; to win that delay, some heating sources other than gas or electricity have to be developed.

House heat directly from coal is a possibility, but few people are willing to tolerate a smoggy view of Pike's Peak or injured health as the price, and residential-size coal pollution devices are impractical. In many regions the com­mon substitute for gas heat is oil heat, but that supply has never been estab­lished in Colorado and, even if distri­bution systems were set up, is subject to shortages as is natural gas. So, unless something changed, the future looked all-electric—and expensive.

The solar alternative But Mayor Andrew Marshall, a trans­

planted New Englander, did see an al­ternate future. Among the well-known assets of Colorado Springs are its cold, clear winters and its moderate summers. To Marshall, the climate (which is toler­able in summer without air-condition­ing) and the specific need to provide space heating seemed to be tailormade conditions for solar heating.

"I felt that solar heating technology— as opposed to solar electricity—was not that far down the road," recalls Marshall. In early December of 1973, at Marshall's urging, a broad-based committee of local leaders organized to look into the pos­sibility of solar heating for Colorado Springs. Most of them quickly became solar converts, and following a mid-December meeting with several National Science Foundation staff who already had some experience to share from other solar heating projects, the committee de­cided to form a nonprofit corporation to build a demonstration solar house. By mid-January, the Phoenix Corporation was formed, it chose a highly visible site on the local builders' "Parade of Homes," and a group of local banks agreed to make a loan to finance con­struction.

Douglas Jardine, who heads a local construction engineering firm, came up with the heating plant design. In plan­ning and putting together the system he was able to draw on the rapidly developing state of the art that was emerging from early NSF-supported re­search in solar energy. The heating sys­tem Jardine settled on for the house was an underground hot water storage sys­tem combined with a heat pump and, if needed, a heating element in the water tank. The Sun (or the backup) heats the water, which is passed through a heat exchanger into a hot air system. NSF, interested in assessing the perfor­mance of a marketable solar house in a community setting and comparing it with other research-oriented solar heat­ing installations, provided the city with support for the installation and opera­tion of instruments in the house. "That data," says Marshall, "will enable us to extrapolate the feasibility of solar heating to both smaller and larger struc­tures." (Also, at an early stage of the project, NSF made a small supplemental grant to the city to take advantage of the highly public nature—in terms of ownership, visibility, and operation —of the solar house; that grant sup­ports studies of the legal, economic, and social problems of introducing solar-heated homes in Colorado Springs.) By June of 1974 the house was complete and open to visitors; 20,000 went through it that summer. At the end of the year, after further testing, a family of five moved in to see how a normal heating demand would be handled.

The house, says Marshall, shows that "for new construction here, solar heat­ing is a viable solution right now. Even at current electric prices, with 30-year amortization, it's cheaper than electric heating."

Marshall's statement, says Jardine, could be extended to cover comparison with all forms of available household heat. He claims that amortization stu­dies for the 2,200-square-foot solar house forecast that, in terms of monthly cash flow for the homeowner, it is cheaper, after 36 months, than even gas-fired hot air.

Cost, in fact, not technical feasibility, dominates solar heating discussions in Colorado Springs. The solar house

26 MOSAIC July/August 1975

seems to have met its initial objective of demonstrating that existing technology is already adequate for that favorable region. Ninety four percent of the visi­tors surveyed during their visits to the house in the summer of 1974 said they would be willing to live in a solar home —if the price were right.

Getting the mortgage up The serious stumbling block solar

homes face that the whole Colorado Springs community is trying to remove is "front-end cost"—that additional selling price of a solar home compared to a con­ventional one. Traditional financing practice has been for a lender to peg the amount of a home loan to the borrower's

income and indebtedness; the lender's formula assumes some standard propor­tion of housing costs that go to pay for utility service.

But a borrower could afford a higher monthly mortgage payment if the cost of heating the house were smaller. For example, Jardine estimates that the Phoenix Corporation house will require 112 million Btu's per year to heat it. At current gas rates (which are on their way up), that would cost $194. Heating

Outside and in. More? than 20,000 visitors to the solar house, whose striking exterior design sets it apart from its neighbors, have found that, inside, it shows no obvious signs of being "different."

the house electrically would cost $840. If Jardine's estimate that solar heat can supply 80 percent of the house's needs is correct, then solar heat would cost $75 —the cost to circulate the solar heat plus the cost of optimized heat pump opera­tion to meet 20 percent of the heat­ing demand. If those figures hold up, they would result in an annual differ­ence between solar and electric of $765; that difference would jump to $1,147 at electric rates 50 percent higher and $1,530 per year if and when electric rates doubled those of today. These dif­ferences would be enormous over the mortgage life of a house.

The cost of the prototype solar heat­ing system (including the standard forced

MOSAIC July/August 1975 27

air ductwork) in the city's solar house is estimated at $11,000 (out of a total of $94,500 for the one-of-a-kind house), but it's hard to break out the costs ac­curately. The figure includes expense for instrument access needed for research, but that a normal house wouldn't have. Also, points out Jardine, the under­ground water storage tank is larger than would be needed for normal op­eration. In a test late last fall the house was maintained at 68° F on stored heat alone for 17 days—about three times as long as the longest cloudy spell in Colo­rado Springs' history. Jardine now esti­mates that, on subsequent houses in that model, the additional cost for a solar system would run about $6,000.

Interestingly, that performance was aided by the high-ceilinged design of the house, in which radiant heat enter­ing the house through the windows is effectively circulated to the interior. Throughout the winter the house never had to draw on the stored solar heat from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on cloud­less days. Moreover, that heating bonus is restricted to winter; overhangs on the windows shade them in summer when the Sun is higher in the sky. (The solar house 's energy-conserving features, which also include all double-glazed windows, good insulation, and a window-less northern exposure, are equally ap­plicable to any house, regardless of heat­ing system.)

Even though the front-end costs for a solar house are going to be higher than for a similar non-solar house, the long-term economics ought to be convincing enough for banks to permit larger mort­gages on solar houses. The hangup now, says Jardine, is not the banks' reluctance to make the loans (many of those he's familiar with, some of whom partici­pated in the financing of the solar house, are most willing), but the hesitation of appraisers hired by the banks to assign added value to a solar technology they are unfamiliar with. Overcoming that, he adds, may require an educational pro­gram geared to the appraisers' needs, drawing on results of the Colorado Springs solar house as well as those of solar installations in other places.

Getting the price down What may be a bigger hurdle for

single-family solar homes is a cost that can't be amortized'—backup systems. The Colorado Springs solar house is de­

signed to meet 80 percent of its heating needs with solar energy, but the other 20 percent requires high-voltage electri­city to run the backup systems. And although the system was deliberately designed to draw that power only at off-peak hours, when the city's electric plants are operating below capacity, the house must have a full 12.5 KVA elec­trical hookup—as if it were heated all the time by electricity. Current building codes for solar houses require 100-per­cent backup.

Now, ordinarily, the city will provide a 12.5 KVA underground electrical hookup to a new electrically heated house and know that it will recover the cost of the installation in the sale of electricity to the customer. So it charges the builder, say, $600, and collects the other $1,700 from the owner over the life of the house. But if the Department of Public Utilities is only going to get some $75 a year in high voltage electrical use, it's going to charge for its costs at the start.

One way to get around that dilemma, and currently being pursued, is to see if the building code can be changed to re­duce the necessary backup. That could reduce systems cost and, perhaps, elec­trical service installation costs too.' Ex­perience with the city's house, as it's documented by the continuously record­ing instrumentation, should be informa­tive in this regard. Aside from that problem, the existing building codes ap­pear to be adequate to cover solar houses. But, suggests Pete Tyree of the Regional Building Department, the code ought to have a descriptive chapter added with certain minimum criteria for design of solar heating systems to protect the con­sumer and to provide minimum safety standards.

Allied legal problems of zoning don't seem to present any serious problems for single-family homes in the Colorado Springs' region; analysis of aerial photo­graphs taken in late December shows that only one or two percent of the area of existing roofs in a sample neighbor­hood is shaded by adjacent structures. Multiple-unit construction, taller and with need for more solar collector area, may require more care, however. The city's NSF-supported Legal Research Committee is studying a number of al­ternative zoning ordinances that could provide that protection and will prob­ably recommend one to the city at the completion of its work. At the State level,

Colorado Senator Joseph Schieffelin re­cently introduced a "sunshine protec­tion" bill that would allow the purchase of "solar easements" above neighboring property to assure unblocked access to sunlight.

Central hot water plants The problem of backup for single-

family solar homes is one that Jim Phillips, head of the city's Department of Public Utilities, the organization that has to assess the service connection charges, would prefer not to have to deal with. Ideally, he'd like to see those back-ups independent of the utility sys­tem to relieve his problem of providing for even more peaking energy. An indi­vidual propane unit might be a possibil­ity.

But Phillips' reluctance to tie the util­ity system into single houses shouldn't be misconstrued. Though he has to worry about and plan for all manners of energy sources, none captures his enthusiasm as much as solar heating.

Most of the energy contingency plans for Colorado Springs are aimed at stretching out the time until new elec­trical generating plants are needed (a goal the city has been helped in con­siderably by a reduction in energy de­mand of six to eight percent since the gas moratorium, primarily the result of large conservation efforts of military installations). Most of the plans are looking at substitutes for natural gas. For example: coal-fired central hot water plants for the downtown area or large apartments or clusters of houses (central plants would be large enough—unlike single homes—to justify the necessary expense of pollution controls on the smokestacks); geothermal wells; a stor­age facility for heating oil; purchase of electricity from the Bureau of Reclama­tion; and development and sale of solar heat by the city.

"Our department isn't geared to pro­fit," says Phillips. "It's geared to our customers, so we're trying every way we can to avoid having to use electricity for heating. It's just going to cost the consumer too much. Also, we're trying not to respond to this current problem by shifting to some other traditional energy source; that may just be setting the stage for worse problems later."

Phillips is interested in the develop­ment of neighborhood-sized heat sup­plies, particularly solar, though he sees

28 MOSAIC July/August 1975

:oal as another s t rong contender. ["Maybe we could even give people a choice of a coal or solar neighborhood.") The idea is that, if suitable older neigh­borhoods can be converted to either kind of central heating system, their natural gas can be diverted to other uses, stretching out the supply. Then new development—the growth that Colorado Springs expects to resume—wouldn't be tied to the very uncertain gas supply.

The city's solar house, even with a lower priced solar heating system, would still be an expensive home. It was built as a showplace, and succeeded in con­vincing its visitors that solar heat was feasible. (In early 1975 the city—in an indication of its commitment to pursue the possibilities of solar energy to solve its problems—bought it from Phoenix Corporation, and the Public Utilities De­partment is continuing to use it for re­search.) But central systems appear more appropriate for the average pocket-book and, moreover, they can be de­veloped independent of architecture; all that's needed is a hot water line into the house, with a simple heat exchanger to produce hot air.

"The next step in the city's plans," says Mayor Marshall, "is to include a central solar plant in an urban renewal project that will rehabilitate 34 presently unoccupied flat-top duplexes. If the eco­nomics work out the way we expect, it could have considerable impact on rental scales."

Among the advantages of the city's actually operating the system is that the problem of backup is reduced; initial costs can be spread over many users. In that case, Phillips would prefer electrical backup for central systems; his depart­ment could then determine when the backup system should be operated to smooth out electrical demand.

Five years' grace Meanwhile, in neighboring Manitou

Springs, a community also served by Colorado Springs utilities, the Colorado Electronic Technical College has plans to build a 200-bed hospital and college for teaching allied health and paramedical services. That 400,000-square-foot struc­ture would be solar-heated, running off a one million-gallon water storage sys­tem. And another of the Utility De­partment's customers, Fort Carson—the largest army post in the western United States—is now considering retrofitting

solar heat on some of its buildings and will very likely move to solar heating for new construction.

Colorado Springs is not alone in hav­ing to face this gas shortage, but it may have been the first city to recognize the long-range implications. "We faced up to the problem sooner than other Colo­rado communities," says Marshall, "not only because the city owns the utilities, but also because of our growth rate."

"Many other communities," says Phil­lips, "buy energy from big private utili­ties, so they aren't so concerned about running out. But they should be. Vari­ous economic circumstances," he adds, "have given us some time—I'd say no more than five years—to develop our alternative energy sources. We want to use that time to push solar energy before we're pushed again by demand. If we're successful, it will mean that Colorado Springs can offer cheaper energy than other areas, and if that's the case, we should be able to choose the kinds of industrial development we want here, to grow as the community would like to."

Obviously, a number of circumstances converged to give Colorado Springs the start it now has in developing alterna­tive energy sources: a natural gas crisis; concentrated local responsibility to get something done; favorable geography; a mayor who remembered the lessons of his physics courses in college 40 years

ago; a local engineer who is determined to prove the viability of solar heating; and, of course, a multifaceted technology evolving from a variety of research activities being done with public and private support.

Certainly an important element of Colorado Springs' story is the way in which information about the technol­ogies was made available so quickly and so directly to potential users, partly through the traditional mechanisms of publication of research results and partly through direct, highly specific contact between elements of local and Federal government. The lesson for other com­munities who think science and tech­nology can help solve local problems may be that by augmenting their own resources with the information and ex­pertise available to them from other gov­ernmental organizations, they may be in a far stronger position than they would have expected to do the job themselves.

@

The xvork described in this article has been partially supported by NSF's Inter­governmental Science Program and by the Office of Public Technology Projects.

MOSAIC July/August 1975 29