Techno-economic analysis of an integrated collector storage solar water heater with CPC reflector for households

ABSTRACT

Few countries bank on solar water heating systems (SWHS) to meet their domestic hot water needs, and instead prefer to use fuel or electric/gas geysers. The reason is the former having relatively high initial investment and performance marred by poor maintenance, and the latter having low initial cost. In this light, we need to compare the economic feasibility of an SWHS with the other alternatives. In almost all solar energy systems, the annual loads are met by a combination of solar and non-solar alternatives, i.e. auxiliary or conventional energy source. Several economic criteria have been proposed and used for evaluating and optimising solar energy systems. The authors have made use of EES software to obtain the economic figures of merit. The proposed model has low initial cost and better long-time thermal performance estimates. The annual solar fraction for the model is 0.55 and the payback period is two years.

KEYWORDS:

• ICSSWH (integrated collector storage solar water heater)
• air gap
• solar fraction
• net present worth
• payback

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.