DOD Should Give More Consideration to Passive Solar Systems for New Military Family Housing

Gao ID: EMD-82-74 May 17, 1982

Since 1979, the Department of Defense (DOD) has been required to consider using solar energy systems in all new units constructed under its military family housing construction program. GAO conducted a review to determine the extent to which DOD was considering the use of such systems for new military family housing.

For fiscal years 1981 and 1982, GAO found that DOD had planned to use very few active or passive solar energy systems in its military family housing. The reasons for not using more of these systems varied. DOD has established a policy, issued guidance, and the military services are routinely making detailed evaluations of the potential for using various configurations of active solar systems. DOD generally found such systems uneconomical and a GAO review showed that the DOD evaluations appeared to be reasonable. With respect to passive systems, DOD had not established a policy or provided detailed guidance to the military services. Consequently, passive solar systems were not evaluated to the same extent as active systems, and the consideration that each service gave to including passive solar systems in newly constructed military housing units differed. The Department of Energy (DOE) has funded numerous studies and demonstrations showing that passive solar features are currently economical for residential structures in various regions of the country. However, since the economics of some of these features have not been fully demonstrated using DOD life-cycle cost criteria, DOD has remained unconvinced that they would be economical for military family projects. DOE can provide guidance to help the military services determine which passive solar features are likely to be economical for military family housing.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: James Duffus Iii Team: General Accounting Office: Energy and Minerals Division Phone: (202) 512-7756


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