RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY 2 (K14RE 2)

MONITORING OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS

C) Monitoring of the solar water heating system

Aims and objectives
The objective of this monitoring process is to evaluate the performance of a hot water, solar
heating system under typical operation conditions. The monitoring process will provide valuable
knowledge of system installation, setup of measuring instrumentation, data sampling, data
recording, data retrieval and system performance analysis.

Description of the system

The system consists of 8 collectors of 20 evacuated tubes each (total aperture area of
approximately 8.6 m2), only half of the array on the building is connected to the system. The
Thermomax Solar Collector 'unit' consists of a manifold and tubes. The tubes (collectors) are
individually clamped to the manifold. For larger solar heating demand, the manifolds are
connected in series to meet the heating needs. The tubes are made of an efficient conducting
"heat-pipe", located inside the evacuated tube (Figure C-1).
The solar radiation strikes the absorber plate which is specially coated and soldered to the heat
pipe, and heating is produced and transported to the working fluid within the pipe. The working
fluid vaporizes and hence starting the vaporization-condensation cycle that transfers heat to the
cylindrical heat-exchanger at the top of the tube. The glass tube is made of a strong transparent
borosilicate glass. The air is evacuated from the glass tube to form a vacuumed space, which
eliminates convective heat losses. The manifold box is made of stainless steel sheet and is
insulated with a high density rock wool.

Figure C-1 A schematic describing the Thermomax solar tubes and its manifold arrangement
The array has a modular assembly feature which allows for easy installation and ability to
expand its size by adding as many tubes as needed.

The system is integrated into a hot water system and used to provide hot water for Angela
Marmont Building as well as heating for the main lab area of the building. Occasionally, the hot
water is also used to provide heating for absorption refrigeration in the Z-block building.
Other components of the system include:

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  The storage tank
 An expansion vessels
 Air vent special
 Internal heat exchanger (inside the tank)
 Pressure relief valves (at the top of the collector array)
 Flow indicator and
 Circulating pumps and number of control valves
Equipment setup:
A schematic showing the system setup and the monitoring instrumentation is shown in Figure C-
2.
A weather station comprising a pyranometer for solar radiation, anemometer for wind speed and
direction and ambient temperature and humidity measurements are installed on the building
where the collector array is located to provide weather data. Data from this weather station is
separately recorded by a separate data logging system. The pyranometer used is of the type
CM3, and provides solar radiation data on a horizontal plane. You may need to transfer these to
the collector plane, using an appropriate method.
Four thermocouples are used to measure the collector manifold inlet and outlet temperatures and
the storage tank water temperature. Further temperature sensors are also used to measure the
temperature of the heat dump loop pipe, and the pumps are operational for both the collector
cycle, heat dump cycle and the lab rig at Z-block.
The system is controlled using a Thermomax solar heating controller (SMT 400). This is a
highly sophisticated integrated solar heating controller, with ability to operate the solar system
safely. It can be setup to start and stop the circulating pump(s) as required depending on the
temperatures of the system. It can also be used to collect and analyse data and reveal system
performance.
You would be expected to understand the piping connection, and measuring arrangement. The
aim is to provide an opportunity to look at the components provided and think about how they
may be put together to produce a working system. Help will be on hand to check progress and
answer questions.
The measurement will be made using a data logger (data taker DT 500). The transducers
(thermocouples) used to monitor the performance of the system will be connected to the data
logger. The data logger has a number of input ports to connect transducer’s output, a CPU to
perform calculations on the input data.
To perform the data logging and data processing, a control software is usually written on a PC
and transferred over to the logger. When the memory on the logger is full, the data are
downloaded by connecting a PC and copying the results to the PC hard drive. The RAM in the
logger may then be cleared ready to accept more results.
Writing the control software for the logger will form one of the tasks in this project. Essentially
this involves specifying which of the input data should be accepted from and how frequently it
should be collected.
Issues which require particular attention include inputs connection to the data logger channels,
writing a data logger program, data logger connection to the computer, sending the program to
the data logger, data logging, data viewing and data retrieve.
Data logging interval could be adjusted to 60 seconds. This may result in large amounts of data
to be collected over the monitoring period. The memory capacity on the data logger may not

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permit record of all the data throughout the duration of the logging period, and therefore you
would need to save the measured data on the computer hard disk instead. To avoid loss of data
for any reason, it will be necessary to download the data each day and send these amongst the
rest of the group. If Necessary, a rota could be organised whereby a number of students visit the
site at the start or at the end of each day to inspect the system to ensure it is operating correctly
and download the data. These should then be e-mailed to the rest of the group. This will reduce
the amount of data in each file, allowing for easy manipulation and analysis. If this is not
possible, your tutor could collect the data on your behalf and put these on the Moodle
Once the monitoring equipment is setup, the system will be left operational for a minimum of 7
days.

Measurements:
The parameters that are to be measured include.
 Solar insolation (W/m2); by a separate data logging system (horizontal plane)
 Solar array inlet temperature (C); return pipe temperature.
 Solar array outlet temperature (C); tank flow.
 Storage tank temperature (C)
 Heat dump cycle temperature
 Ambient temperature (C); by a separate data logging system
 Wind speed (m/sec); by a separate data logging system
The volume flow rate of the circulating water through the collector manifold and heat exchanger
should be obtained from the Thermomax control system (SMT 400). This is adjusted at 20 Litre
per minute; slightly above the rule of thump, (20 ml/s) per square meter of the collector area.
Data analysis
The data collected from the solar thermal system should be used to calculate the followings:

 Heat energy delivered by the solar system

 instantaneous efficiency of the system
 total daily heat energy production
 average daily efficiency of the solar collector array
 total energy produced over the course of the monitoring period
 average efficiency of the system over the course of the monitoring period

The heat energy, Q, delivered by the solar thermal collector may be determined using
Q = m Cp T
The efficiency = Q/(HT*A)
Where m is the mass of water flowing through the collector (kg/s) - equal to the flow rate in
m3/s multiplied by the density = 1000kg/m3 , Cp is the specific heat capacity of water (4.2
kJ/kg/K) and  is the difference in temperature between the water entering the collector
manifold and the water leaving it (Tank flow).
The results can be presented in a table format as well as graphically whenever possible.
Some of the graphs that you are expected to produce could include:

 Collector inlet, outlet, tank and ambient temperature variation with the time.
 Variation of system output and solar radiation with the time
 Array efficiency curves
 Summary table of the total daily energy and system efficiency.

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 Pressure relive valve Pyranometer
Anemometer
RHT
Vent

Weather Station
Solar Panel
array

T2
Heat
Exchanger

T1 T5
Lab rig

T6

Heat Dump
Hot water out loop

Auxiliary heater

T3

Cold water in

Figure C-2 A schematic showing the different components of the solar thermal system

T1 is panel flow temperature, T2 is panel return temperature, T3 is the tank temperature, T5 is

heat dump flow, and T6 is heat dump return (These may have labeled differently in the lab)

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