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Cool idea comes from the sun

A rooftop device harnesses heat from above to keep buildings cool. It saves money, too.

By ASJYLYN LODER, Times Staff Writer
Published October 9, 2007

Scott Jorgensen, left, president and chief executive officer of Solarsa, describes his system to Jamie Miller of the Wellness Community during a demonstration atop Jorgensen's home. Solarsa targets businesses, not residences.
	[Ken Helle | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Ken Helle | Times] "You make the investment, and you know up front what your energy costs are going to be," says Solarsa president and chief executive officer Scott Jorgensen. [Ken Helle | Times] A reading from the hot water collector attached to the Solarsa system shows a water temperature of 176 degrees.

TAMPA - The sun shifts, clouds move obligingly aside, and in one blinding second, the mirrored cradle on Scott Jorgensen's roof flashes to life.

His lilac house, with the rose garden out front and the strange shiny contraption on the roof, is the curiosity of his Davis Islands neighborhood, and the informal laboratory for his start-up venture, Solarsa. His plan is to sell a counterintuitive bit of science, using heat from the sun to keep buildings cool.

He's not a scientist or inventor.

"I'm a guy that four years ago said, 'You know what? It p------ me off that we can send people to the moon, and we can't solve our energy problems,' " Jorgensen explained. "If the majority of our energy is producing heating and cooling and hot water, then why are we wasting all of our time trying to produce electricity?"

Solarsa's innovation is simplicity. Its team includes engineers, scientists and HVAC contractors. The parts on Jorgensen's house - pipes, pumps, solar collectors - come from the United Kingdom, Japan, Texas and Connecticut.

Your Solarsa system will arrive in a box, ready to install.

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Using his home as a laboratory has its benefits. Said Jorgensen: "The lesson we learned doing it on homes is that we don't want to do it on homes."

So Jorgensen decided to go after another market, one that makes lots of similar buildings, or one very large facility, like chain restaurants, hotels or medical centers. Solarsa can design an "off-the-rack" system for a chain and install it at dozens of locations.

The company hopes to wrap up its first big sale soon, installing a $7-million system for a 600,000-square-foot luxury assisted living facility.

But his first installation is close to home. He and his wife, Estela Jorgensen, own Estela's, the Mexican food chain. He's installing the first system at their Brandon location.

The system will cost $300,000. Federal tax incentives reduce that by $90,000, leaving him with a $210,000 investment.

But he expects that he'll cut his energy bill in half, from the $3,500 a month he spends for electricity and gas to $1,750. At that rate, he'll pay for the system in 10 years, even if fuel prices don't rise.

"The biggest economic advantage people get is predictable energy prices," Jorgensen said. "You make the investment, and you know up front what your energy costs are going to be."

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The long cradle on Jorgensen's roof looks like a tanning bed with the top open. Instead of tanning lamps, there are long strips of mirrors.

Where the top would be, curved stanchions support a long, narrow panel of iridescent solar panels, catching the light and heat from the mirrors.

Behind the strip run two pipes. One carries reclaimed water up. As it runs behind the panel, it is heated up to 200 degrees and carried back down. The heated "process water" runs into a "water-to-water heat exchanger," heating water for drinking, bathing and cleaning. The pipes from the roof replace the electric or gas-fired heating element that most of us have in our hot-water heaters.

But how does hot water create cool air?

Water doesn't really "get" cold; it loses or gains heat. In this case, the hot water is used in a condensing and heat-exchange process. It chills water that runs in pipes through the warm house. The chilled pipes absorb heat.

On a recent hot and humid morning, Jorgensen stood sweating on the roof of his house. Then he stepped into his home office, a cool 75 degrees. He pointed out the thermostat on the wall.

"It works," Jorgensen said later. "It's no different than any other air conditioner. We set the thermostat and set it to heating or cooling."

Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or (813) 225-3117.

[Last modified October 8, 2007, 22:54:49]