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Create Green Home
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Green
Project - Solar Hot Water System in Germany |
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New Passive
House Certified in Maine!
More...
Italian family
enjoys benefits of Solar Hot Water
More...
Passive House Project
in Canada:
More...
Habitat Metro
Denver Home
- affordable energy efficient
home achieves 59% energy savings!
2009 Solar Decathlon in Washington, DC, has a
Winner!
More...
Team Germany
(Technische Universität Darmstadt) |
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Family Heinrich recently bought a house near
Hannover in northern Germany and decided to go
Green. Soon after moving into their new home, they
installed a Solar Hot Water system for harvesting
the sun's energy to supplement their heating and hot
water needs.
The installation
consists of 2 large solar panel strips, (mounted on
the eastern roof), three hot water storage
tanks, integral natural gas burner, enclosed
fireplace along with system of pumps
and pressure controllers. |
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Solar panels installed on the roof facing east
(due to roof configuration) |
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Two solar
collector strips have a total solar surface area of about 12m2.
Per manufacturer's specifications (see on sidebar), collectors
produce an equivalent of 4kW of energy and circulate a
refrigerant fluid (Tyfocor LS-Red) to transfer heat to the water
tanks. Water tank system has a total capacity of 635 liters and
consists of three tanks. Main tank is for storing heat from the
collectors and is used for heating. The second tank receives
that heat from the main tank and is for drinkable water only
(149 lit). The third tank is a buffer tank (30 lit) that accepts
any excess heat produced by the panels.
The whole SHW
system is manufactured by
Solvis,
a German company from a nearby town of Braunschweig, and was
installed by a local heating equipment dealer.
Solvis
offers various system configurations ranging from a
complete solution like Heinrich's (including solar panels and
backup gas burner) to the setup with only gas or oil and
possibility of adding the solar later, or going only with solar
for hot water heating.
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Solar hot water storage tank and
natural gas external burner (dark gray appendage with a small
digital display). Pumps and controllers for two solar panel banks
are shown on the wall. |
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The
Heinrich's heating system even includes an enclosed fireplace in the
loop which heats the water in the storage tank
whenever the fire is crackling. In their case,
natural gas is used as a main fuel source for hot water
and heating. |
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Enclosed fireplace connected to the
hot water system. Anytime fire is crackling a system of pipes above
the firebox circulates the water and channels the heated water back
to the tank. |
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After having the system functioning flawlessly for
the past 6 months, Heinrichs already saw a
significant reduction in their natural gas bills.
For the few winter months before the SHW was
installed, gas bill was on the order of
€
150 per month. In recent months, with the help of
solar panels on the roof, the natural gas bill was
reduced to €
6 per month!
More details on the
overall system performance are to follow. Heinrich's
are keeping a close tab on all performance
parameters and the full report will be published
soon with a detailed ROI calculation. From
preliminary data, the payback time seems to be
somewhere between 4 and 5 years. Stay tuned! |
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