Solar water Heater: Complete Overview and Guide

Solar water Heater: Complete Overview and Guide

"Burned areas of Amazon could take the centuries to fully recover!!" – The Verge. Hardly anyone is unaware of this worst news of the year. All the news channels, social media platforms, blogposts are overloaded with the cause, consequences, updates and sympathetic opinions, but hardly a few realize that we have burnt many forests just for fulfilling our heat demand directly or indirectly.

Imagine the world of future; your imagination will drive you to a roller coaster ride of new advancement in technology, more automation, more AI, enhanced robotics, Space war and so on. But what of nature, our mother Earth. What I can imagine is – Depleted fossils, energy crisis, water problem, climate change, drowned cities under seawater, no polar zones, droughts, etc. We only have nightmares while sleeping, but now is the time to awake. Let’s start to save the Earth by opting for sustainable and renewable sources of energy. Let’s collect what The Sun gives us free of cost and take a step for a better future. I hope this complete guide on Solar Water Heater will help you a lot.

Solar Water Heater:

Available with a different name in the market viz. Solar Water Heater, Solar water heating systems, Domestic solar water heaters, Solar Gyser, etc., it is the most effective way to generate hot water with the minimum impact on the environment By collecting solar energy, solar water heater gives hot water as output. Utilization of freely available sunshine makes it cost-effective, pollutionless, eco-friendly and sustainable.

1. Major Components of Solar Water Heater

Basically, Solar Water Heater System consists of three major components: Heat Collector, Storage tank and connecting Pipes. Earlier models couldn’t work at freezing temperature, very hot climate or cloudy day but nowadays, technology up-gradation has made it possible to work effectively even at unfavorable climatic conditions.

a. Solar Heat Collector

b. Storage Tanks

c. Other components (heat pumps, monitoring devices, etc.)

A. Solar Heat Collectors:

As the name suggests, heat collectors are the component that collects heat from the sunshine. These are vital components in any solar heating system. Basically, there are three types of solar collectors that are predominantly used for residential purposes.

1. Flate Plate Collectors:

These are the most fundamental type of solar collector that has been used since the beginning. The basic principle of these collectors is: the sun heats a dark flat surface which collects the maximum possible heat and then transfers it to the water. The main components of Flat plat collector are as follow:

a. Black surface - It absorbs the heat from incident solar radiation.

b. Glazing cover – It is a transparent layer that transmits radiation to the absorber, and also protects the heat loss by radiation or convection.

c. Circulating Tubes: These tubes contain the heating fluid to transfer heat from the collector for meeting the end purpose.

d. Support Structure

e. Insulation cover

Advantages of Flat Plate Collectors:

a. Flat Plate collectors are simple and cheap.

b. Easy to manufacture, install and operate.

c. Less maintenance

d. Permanently fixed.

2. Integral Collector-Storage System:

In this collector and storage are encased in a single unit. It contains single or multiple black painted tanks or collectors. Coldwater flows through the preheated collector tubes or tanks and gets heated. This is more utilizable in mid-freeze climatic regions. Mostly used for household applications.

3. Evacuated tube-solar collector:

It contains parallel rows of transparent glass tubes. Each tube has an outer glass tube to receive maximum solar radiation and an inner metal tube which acts as a heat absorber attached to the fin. The fin is duly coated to restrict the heat loss and transfer maximum possible heat to the running fluid or water. These types of collectors are most frequently used across the globe. Also, it is the most used solar water heater in India both for residential and commercial purposes.

B. Storage Tanks:

Almost every kind of solar water heaters requires a well-insulated storage tank. These tanks have outlet and inlet connected to and from the collector, storage and utility point. There can be a single or two-tank system. In the two-tank systems, the preheating of water is done before it enters the conventional water heater. In single-tank systems, the back-up heater is combined with the solar storage in one tank.

C. Other Components:

Other components in the solar hot water system can be water pumps, heat pumps, heat exchangers, plumbing fixtures, plumbing components, supporting structures, electronic controls, valves, monitoring devices, etc. Also, there are several other components that can be added to solar water heaters to improve the efficiency of the system.

About the author: Green 4 Life Energy is an Indian venture of Green 4 Life Oz - an Australian company with an experience of more than 15 years in Rooftop solar. With headquarter at Jhansi, in Uttar Pradesh,