Edwin Pawlowski wrote:

"Lou" wrote in message
...

The boilers have input of 5,500,000 Btu each. Tell me how many acres of
solar I'll need to convert 350 to 450 gallons of water per hour (at 60
degrees) to steam at 100 psi, especially running at night.

I don't know and neither do you. What I'm saying is that if I had
no choice but to spend that much money on heating just one thing
I would at the very least, get a quote instead of complaining about
it.
Lou

First off, I'm not complaining, I'm looking at reducing fuel costs. Just
stating a fact

The magnitude of steam that we use would probably need a few thousand acres
of solar panels in Arizona, not New England. Then we'd need accumulators
capable of holding massive amounts of high pressure steam during the dark
hours. There are NO industrial process boilers powered by solar because of
the utter impracticality of it.

A building the size that would house such boilers and the process
equipment using their output probably has enough roof area to hold a
reflector array and collector tower to generate the daytime steam. Not
going to help at night, but assuming constant three shift use could
cover 30% of the energy needs.