Recently builders have shown considerable interest in combining the features of active and passive solar space heating systems into a hybrid system employing active collection and some form of passive discharge/storage device. Ye examined the performance and economics of a hybrid2 air-based, residential system using 18.5 m of roof-mounted air collectors and a hollow-core slab that discharges di...

Determining the heating mechanism (or mechanisms) that causes the outer atmosphere of the Sun, and many other stars, to reach temperatures orders of magnitude higher than their surface temperatures has long been a key problem. For decades, the problem has been known as the coronal heating problem, but it is now clear that 'coronal heating' cannot be treated or explained in isolation and that th...

The paper discusses the modeling of a central solar heating plant with seasonal storage in the ground using the new object-oriented physical systems modeling language Modelica. Main emphasis is put on the hierarchical decomposition of the system model and on the re-engineering of an existing Fortran code for the ground store model. The object-oriented physical system model is compiled to a math...

Determining the heating mechanism (or mechanisms) that causes the outer atmosphere of the Sun, and many other stars, to reach temperatures orders of magnitude higher than their surface temperatures has long been a key problem. For decades, the problem has been known as the coronal heating problem, but it is now clear that ‘coronal heating’ cannot be treated or explained in isolation and that th...

Canadian researchers are now trying to exploit much more energy from solar sources, hydropower, wind, and biomass. Given the fact that reducing the carbon pollutant level is a political priority in Canada, this paper studies the feasibility of providing sanitary hot water and space heating demands of a four-member family in 10 provinces in this country. The feasibility analysis was performed by...

Solar thermal water heating systems reduce household energy bills by using the free solar radiation provided by the sun to heat water for residential needs. In order to eliminate the need for electricity to run a pump to drive the fluid circulation in these systems, fluid buoyancy effects can be employed to move the fluid from lower elevations to higher elevations. There are several operational...

The primary energy consumption in residential buildings is determined by the envelope thermal characteristics, air change, outside climatic data, users’ behaviour and the adopted heating system and its control. The new Italian regulations strongly suggest the installation of centralized boilers in renovated buildings with more than four apartments. This work aims to investigate the differences ...

We introduce the improved Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) high-resolution radiation scheme FUBRad and compare it to the 4-band standard ECHAM5 SW radiation scheme of Fouquart and Bonnel (FB). Both schemes are validated against the detailed radiative transfer model libRadtran. FUBRad produces realistic heating rate variations during the solar cycle. The SW heating rate response with the FB scheme...

A box-type solar heater was designed, constructed, and used to determine the effect of solar heating on quality of domestic roof-harvested rainwater (DRHRW). During testing, naturally contaminated DRHRW was harvested in Ibadan, Nigeria, and released into the system at 93.96 Lh(-1) (2.61 × 10(-5) m(3) s(-1)) in a continuous flow process. Water temperatures at inlet, within the heating chamber, a...

A wide range of existing power technologies can make use of the solar energy reaching Earth. Basically, all those ways can be divided into two basic categories: transformed for use elsewhere or utilized directly – direct – and involving more than one transformation to reach a usable form – indirect. The Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) is part of the solar thermal group of indirect solar conver...