Solar heating/cooling and domestic hot-water systems

摘要

Increasing awareness of global warming forces policy makers and industries to face two challenges: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and securing stable energy supply against ever-increasing world energy consumption, which is projected to increase by 71% from 2003 to 2030. In addressing these two issues simultaneously, renewable energies prove themselve attractive, as they are independent from the fossil fuel supply and do not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, providing heating and cooling by utilizing renewable energy such as solar energy is a key solution to the energy and environmental issues. This paper makes references to the solar generation of thermal energy and its use for buildings and domestic water heating, describing both different types of solar equipment and system, and developing a mathematical model for energetical analysis of the solar heating systems. Also, this paper provides a review of the available cooling technologies assisted by solar energy and their recent advances.