Solar collectors. Solar heat storage systems. Scheme, description

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RADIO ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
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Solar collectors. Solar heat storage systems. Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering

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Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering / Alternative energy sources

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If you install a collector of a much larger area and connect it to a very capacious storage tank, you can provide heating for several houses at once. However, the main problem of solar energy is related to the fact that energy is needed mainly in winter, when the amount of solar radiation is low, and, on the contrary, most of the summer potential is not used due to lack of demand. Therefore, investing in large collectors of greater productivity does not make sense.

However, there are also installations that allow in winter to use the heat accumulated in the summer by solar collectors and stored with the help of large storage tanks (seasonal storage). The problem here is that the amount of liquid needed to heat a house is comparable to the volume of the house itself. In addition, the heat storage must be very well insulated. In order for a conventional domestic storage tank to retain most of the heat for half a year, it would have to be wrapped in a layer of insulation 4 meters thick. Therefore, it is advantageous to make the storage capacity very large. As a result, the ratio of surface area to volume decreases.

Large solar district heating installations are used in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, France and the USA. Solar modules are installed directly on the ground. Without storage, such a solar heating installation can cover about 5% of the annual heat demand, since the installation must not generate more than the minimum amount of heat consumed, including losses in the district heating system (up to 20% during transmission). If there is daytime heat storage at night, then a solar heating installation can cover 10-12% of the heat demand, including transmission losses, and with seasonal heat storage, up to 100%. There is also the possibility of combining district heating with individual solar collectors. The district heating system can be switched off for the summer when the hot water supply is provided by the Sun and there is no demand for heating.

Large residential seasonal heat storage systems have already been built in several countries, but are still quite expensive. The size of the central vault varies from several thousand to several hundred thousand cubic meters. The largest storage facility of this kind in Europe is located in the city of Oulu (Finland). Set up in a gigantic 200 m000 stone cave, it will be connected to a biomass combined heat and power plant. This heating plant was built within the framework of the EU-Thermie program implemented by the European Union.

Another successful seasonal hot water storage project is located in the city of Lukebo (Sweden). It uses a water-filled rock cave (105 m000) and 3 m28 flat plate solar collectors to supply 800% of the required energy (2 MWh/year) for hot water and heating of 100 homes. All these houses are connected to the communal district heating system. The temperature of the water supplied to consumers is 8500 degrees Celsius, and the return water is 550 degrees.

The payback period of such installations is very long. The most important lesson learned from the experience with heating systems is to invest in energy efficiency and passive solar design first, and then use solar energy to make up for the missing space heating energy.

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