Dear Solarthermalworld.org Reader,
Solar
collectors can be used for a large variety of applications. The
well-established ones are certainly domestic hot water and space
heating. Air heating or cooling as well as steam production are becoming
increasingly popular. This newsletter shows two new applications which
have not yet been widely used, but which offer large energy-saving
potential: vacuum tube collectors feeding into the circuit of a
compression chiller and unglazed collectors to regenerate a borehole
field.
The
photo shows a 160 m² collector array on the roof of a fruit processing
plant in the UK. The special characteristic of this system is the
refrigerant gas flowing through the U-pipes of the vacuum collector
field and providing a boost in mass flow inside the condenser of the
compression chillers. This retrofitted collector field, delivered by the
British company SolarCool, is connected to a five-chiller installation,
reduces the chillers’ annual electricity demand by between 20 and 30
%.
Additionally,
unglazed absorbers can be connected to the back of PV modules to absorb
the waste heat of the solar cells. A Swiss demonstration plant In a
multi-family housing area with 1,300 m² of PVT collectors, manufactured
by Swiss PV specialist Meyer Burger, shows a solar thermal yield of 330
kilowatt hours from otherwise wasted heat in addition to the 160
kilowatt hours of solar electricity – both for each m² of module
surface.
Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts
The Editorial Team
SolarCool
Meyer Burger