Case Studies

Drake Landing Solar Community:

Okotoks, Alberta CA

North America’s first community-sized solar seasonal storage project is currently under construction outside of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Relying on a blend of short-term energy storage provided by large water-filled storage tanks and longer-term energy storage provided by boreholes drilled into the ground in a park near the community, the Okotoks development is projected to be one of the world’s first modern communities that provides more than 90% of the annual heating energy through solar. Fifty-two energy efficient homes will be heated with a combination of solar energy collected from 800 solar collectors mounted on specially designed garages and from gas-fired boilers that will provide back-up for periods of extreme cold or for end-of-season periods when the seasonal storage has been depleted.

As the lead modeling firm for this project, we developed a detailed simulation of the entire project including the collection loop, the distribution loop, the energy storage loop, and the controls in order to predict the performance of the development over its proposed 50-year lifetime. Through the use of optimization techniques, we helped re-design the system to greatly increase the efficiency of the project while still maintaining the project within cost constraints.

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