The Solar Total Energy Project (STEP) was the world's first and largest solar thermal

cogeneration Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise- wasted heat from elec ...

project having an industrial application. Built and operated during the 1980s in

Coweta County, Georgia Coweta County is a County (United States), county in the West Central Georgia, West Central region of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is part of Metro Atlanta. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the populatio ...

, STEP used

solar energy Solar energy is the radiant energy from the Sun's sunlight, light and heat, which can be harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating) and solar architecture. It is a ...

to provide electricity and process heat to a manufacturing facility. Developed as part of the National Solar Thermal Energy Program, which was instituted after the oil crises of the 1970s, STEP was jointly financed by the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

and

Georgia Power Georgia Power is an electric utility headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was established as the Georgia Railway and Power Company and began operations in 1902 running streetcars in Atlanta as a successor to the Atlanta Consol ...

to advance development of nonconventional

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

technology. The objective was to design, construct, operate and evaluate a solar thermal energy system that could provide electrical power,

process steam A process is a series or set of Action (philosophy), activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that p ...

and absorption air conditioning to an adjacent knitwear factory.

Project history

In 1977, DoE selected a joint proposal by Georgia Power and the Westinghouse Advanced Energy Systems Division from a field of 16 competitors from 14 states for STEP's site and commercial application. Design work was completed between 1978 and 1980 under DoE sponsorship (with Georgia Power cost-sharing support) through the construction and test operations phases. The project was formally dedicated and began test operations i
May 1982
Georgia Power assumed full responsibility for STEP's commercial operation in 1984 and continued the project beyond 1987. The project was conceived by Edward J. Ney, a Westinghouse energy physicist who later became a nationally recognized expert on solar energy systems. Ney was the Project Integrator while with Westinghouse, later joining Georgia Power as Manager of Solar Operations and STEP Project Manager. He brought the involved parties into a joint-venture agreement and subsequently oversaw design, construction, test operations, commercial operations, and eventual decommissioning and disassembly of the Project.

Site

The site for the five-plus acre project was Solar Circle, along Amlajack Boulevard, in a commercial park within the former planned community of Shenandoah, Georgia, now part of the city of Newnan. While STEP was shut down and dismantled by 1991, the site of the collector field is still visible from the air, albeit with mature pine trees growing through the crumbling pavement within the still-fenced enclosure. The overall site includes an education center at 7 Solar Circle, between the former collector field and Amlajack Blvd. The facility, known as the

University of West Georgia The University of West Georgia is a public university in Carrollton, Georgia, United States. The university offers a satellite campus in Newnan, Georgia, Newnan, Georgia, select classes at its Douglasville Center, and off-campus Museum Studies c ...

Newnan Center, accommodates classes in a range of curricula.

Industrial application

The industrial application for the project was a knitwear factory operated by Bleyle of America Inc. STEP provided a large part of the electricity for the facility, displacing fossil fuels normally used to generate power to run the factory. STEP also provided process heat for absorption air conditioning within the building, as well as steam (downstream from the turbine) for pressing the knitwear products. The building was designed with a series of features for energy efficiency, including reduced height to minimize wall area and interior volume, a 4-ft insulating earthen berm around the building, north-south orientation, heavily insulated roof and walls, high-efficiency fluorescent lighting, energy-efficient production equipment, and an air conditioning system with an economizer cycle. According to Georgia Power, which monitored the facility's energy requirements as part of the STEP design process, energy conserving features alone reduced the factory's energy consumption by 46 percent. STEP was designed according to electrical, air conditioning and process steam loads already established by the knitwear factory, which began operations during STEP's design phase. These parameters, which represent the facility's relatively constant peak load profile, were used for system design.

Project history

Site

Industrial application

References

Further reading