Solar system application

Solar water heating systems In our region solar energy utilization is considered to be a quickly returning investment because of the advantageous features of the Hungarian climate. In case of an average 250 sunny days per a year, a suitable solar heating system can provide 60-80 % of hot water of a house depending on flat-plate collectors or heat-pipe collectors used. Each household, plant, restaurant and other institute needs hot running water. The average temperature of supplied cold-water is about 10-12 oC, which can be increased by collectors even if there is only slight, filtered sunshine.

Depending on flat or heat-pipe system, 60-80 % of annual average hot water demand can be covered with solar systems providing optimal location of collectors. Heat quantity can be utilised by collectors is 3-3,5 kWh /day/m2 during summer season and is about 0,5-1,5 kWh/day/m2 in winter months (heat-pipe collectors are more efficient). This gained energy must be taken into account when sizing collector systems; daily average cold-water consumption is approximately 50-60 litres per person and 2,5-3kWh heat quantity is needed to heat up this amount of water from 10-12 oC up to 45-55 oC. Consequently, 1m2 solar panel can provide the daily hot water consumption of a person at summer time. Winter time this rate decreases to about 40-50%. Beyond solar collectors the optimization of hot-water storage capacity is also important. The whole system can work efficiently if the produced and stored hot water is enough until the next sunny period.