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Proceedings of eSim 2016: 9th Conference of IBPSA-Canada

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Modeling of photovoltaic, solar thermal, and photovoltaic/thermal domestic hot water systems

Jonathan Berger, Stephen J. Harrison

Abstract: Solar heating of potable water has traditionally been accomplished through the use of thermal solar panels. With the recent increases in availability and lower cost of PV panels, the potential of coupling PV solar arrays to electrically heated domestic hot water (DHW) tanks has been considered. This paper attempts to compare the performance of a traditional solar thermal DHW system to a PV-solar-electric DHW system. To accomplish this, a detailed TRNSYS (Klein, 2006) simulation of various solar hot water systems was configured and simulations were performed for a 250L load in Toronto, ON and Vancouver, BC. In addition, a system utilizing combined PV/Thermal solar collectors was compared. It was shown that when considering both capital costs and operational costs, a PV-DHW system is not yet viable for either region, while the solar thermal and PV/T systems are much more competitive.
Pages: 457 - 463
Paper:
esim2016_43-160