Have you been monitoring how much kwh your solar thermal brings in?

[delboy]

I'm interested in any data that anyone's been collecting of the energy yield of their solar thermal system.

It's for my thesis (at CAT) which is calculating CO2 savings in new build housing if you used solar combined with large thermal stores to contribute towards space heating.

At the moment the data I'll be using is from TSol - would love some real figures though.

Thanks

PS sorry if this info is posted elsewhere - I've tried but failed to find it - feel free to paste links if you know of any. Ta

PPS you can reach me at ollydelmar@yahoo.com

[KLD]

Delboy

Sounds interesting. Just kWh is probably not very useful, so what data do you need to draw meaningful conclusion?
Once you've collected all that data, it'd be a shame to let it vanish into the eternal darkness of some drawer or library shelves  Will you publish your findings here? That would probably help pursuade people here putting in the effort of extrating the data you are after.

Klaus

[Poolguy]

Look at www.poolguyenergy.com

I've tracked the kw and its there to see


Andrew

[rt29781]

Hi Dellboy,  We publish our solar PV figures on our blog (see footnote to this reply).  Our solar thermal system produces about 3 times the PV output.  We put the heat straight into the house in the winter and scavenge the remaining heat into our storage tank.  Its best to use the energy to warm the house than to put it into a tank for it to leak away....On sunny days our 150 tube system has no problem heating our living room.   We live in the south of France.

[delboy]

Folks

Thanks for the replies.

I will happily publish all findings on this website - conclusions hopefully to come in January.

Thanks for the French info, but I should have said I'm only looking for data from England - sorry for confusion.

The thesis is trying to calculate CO2 savings which could be achieved by using solar-combi systems in new-build housing. The configuration I'm looking at is solar into large water stores with DHW and heating draw-off.

To quantify energy savings I need to make projections on solar energy input - TSol is one way, but nothing beats real hard data.

If anyone has this real data from English systems, I'd be really grateful.

Many thanks

[Brandon]

english or british (bearing in mind that westminster sees fit to throw the fine welsh in with the scummy english for a lot of regulations)

[delboy]

As I'm only interested in data collection, the regulations are less relevant.

But since you ask, I am focussing on English. Welsh data would also be interesting due to similar(ish) weather conditions. Scottish and Irish data less suitable but would be interesting nonetheless.

Ta

[David]

But since you ask, I am focussing on English. Welsh data would also be interesting due to similar(ish) weather conditions. Scottish and Irish data less suitable but would be interesting nonetheless.

So, you didn't mention that you are only really interested in English data when you posted, but you are slightly interested in Welsh data.

Remind me where CAT is situated?

[dhaslam]

This graph shows daily output in KWh.  The figures are based on a flow rate that is estimated but the figures should be fairly consistent.    I don't have data for November to March yet but  it is clear that there can be good days in all months of the year and also bad days, even in summer.    The total for the year is likely to just exceed 2500KWh with just over half produced in the four best months.    My annual hot water heating requirement is about 5000KWh

[delboy]

Dhaslam - many thanks for that - just what I'm looking for. Except I'm more interested in data from September - May - will you be monitoring over the winter as well? And when October is finished, would you mind sending me that data? Would be really kind of you.

David - the thesis is looking at English new-build housing. Sorry for not making clear at the outset. I'm not looking at British / UK because that would be more complicated firstly in terms of drawing together 4 different housing policies and secondly the geographical area is a lot larger and therefore comparing solar yields becomes much more unrealistic. Already dodgy to compare SW England with NW. Welsh solar input data is, however, generally fairly useful because irradiation levels are similar-ish to England, even if housing policy is different.

Just because CAT is in Wales doesn't mean that they insist that every thesis has to have an exclusively Welsh angle. Furthermore, I am English and work in England, which means I'm more familiar with English policy. And more housing is to be built in England than Wales, and therefore the study can show data on a larger scale, which may or may not be a good thing. Perhaps something for me to include in the analysis of whether the thesis idea is well founded!

Any other data greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[Paulh_Boats]

My thesis would cut straight to the point:

Conclusion:
Given a succession Governments that seem incapable of planning future energy security all of the above work will sadly be neglected.

What we actually need are revised building regulations than specify solar panels on all houses - all extrapolations of oil and gas supply past peak oil indicate production could decline between 2% and 6% past peak oil (likely before 2020 according to latest UK research). Pick any post-peak oil production decline and supply/demand economics, recent and inevitable speculation in fossil fuel prices and solar will pay back one day, regardless of install costs.
Also the near critical overloading of electricity power stations going forwards suggests that heating water with electricity compared to solar is "crazy".
Given the lifetime of buildings clearly there must be immediate changes in building regulations, so that the maximum number of houses have solar panels when the Nation hits peak oil, at which point electricity consumption could soar.