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St. Regis Aspen goes green

Aspen Times Staff Report
Aspen, CO Colorado

ASPEN ” The St. Regis Aspen Resort is decreasing its carbon footprint with the onset of a solar project that could decrease the hotel’s natural-gas usage by as much as 50 percent.

The hotel, along with the contractor Altech Solar, will begin installing Solar E-Tubes this month. Thirty-seven, 30-tube arrays will be installed on the Monarch Street side of the roof.

Using the sun’s energy, the solar e-tubes ” also known as heat pipes ” are capable of heating water in the vacuum tube arrays to temperatures above 400 degrees. The tubes resemble copper torpedoes with a glass front on the side facing the sun. The heated water will then be transferred to the top of the tubes, where it will be pumped to storage and dispersion tanks. The system will tie in to the resort’s main boiler loop where it will provide heat for domestic water for sinks and showers, building heat, hydronic snowmelt systems, the hotel’s Remede spa and the heated pool and whirlpools.



A digital system regulates pumps, valves and water quantity to maintain the desired range of water temperature. Storage tanks will release the super-heated water into the boiler loop until the temperatures in those tanks drop below a set minimum temperature, for example, after the sun goes down or dense cloud cover takes over. At that point, the system reverts to heating the building’s water with natural gas, until the cycle commences the next day.