Buildings such as care homes, hospitals and medical buildings, sports facilities and hotels have a significant demand for hot water and this is often supplied from a plant room with a centralised hot water system. These buildings lend themselves to a communal solar system.
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How it Works
The solar panels are connected together with a parallel flow of solar fluid. The heat from the solar panel array is transferred indirectly (via a heat exchange coil) to a large buffer tank in the plant room.
The solar buffer tank acts as a pre-heat. Solar heated water from the buffer tank passes to a second hot water store which is heated by an auxilliary heater (e.g. gas, oil, biomass). On those days when there is insufficient light energy to achieve the target temperature in the solar buffer, the auxilliary heater will activate under control of the cylinder thermostat to add just enough heat.
Hot water ready for use is then circulated (pumped) around the building to the points of use. The solar heating system can supply 60-70% of the hot water demand, though a target of 40-50% if often found to be most cost-effective.
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Solar panels are linked together and the
heat they collect is stored in a large buffer vessel
as a pre-heat to a conventional system.
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