Fin MacDonald

Today I travelled to Bridgewater, NS to help an industry partner repair a Web Energy Logger (WEL) installation. The solar system uses 30 evacuated tube collectors to supply heat to an in-floor heating loop and dumps the heat in the summer time. Since I did not take part in the original monitoring system installation this presented challenges that were new to me. I had to look over the monitoring system to understand what it was doing before I started work. I needed to not just be able to understand how it was working, but also make sure that it was working. I located the sensors that were installed and tested their readings against readings on my temperature gun. I found one sensor that was not reading properly and replaced it with a new one. I also installed a current sensing switch on the glycol pump to detect when it is running. Since the in-floor heat loop has a constant flow rate we don’t need to install a flow meter to determine the heat provided by the system. I programmed the WEL with some thermodynamics calculations related to mass flow and it now calculates the energy output in kWh.

The repair job took just over an hour and I gained valuable experience in interpreting the work of others. Its easy to jump in and repair a system you set up yourself but when you are trying to follow the work of others it can be a challenge. Pictured below is the box containing the WEL and router (LEFT) and the building with evacuated tube solar collectors on the roof (RIGHT).