Experimental and numerical analysis of hybrid solar heating and cooling system for a residential user

The paper presents an experimental investigation of a solar dish concentrating system with thermal collectors, along with a numerical investigation of a solar cooling installation based on such system by means of dynamic simulation. The main aim of this study is the analysis of heat generation from the system for heating and cooling purposes, with the use of sorption chillers. A computer simulation of the dynamic operation of the proposed solar heating and cooling system was developed within TRNSYS software. The experimental data were used to validate the model of the concentrator and solar collectors. Successively, a solar heating and cooling installation for a residential application, integrating the different configurations of solar energy collecting devices and thermally driven chillers, was proposed and dynamically simulated. Flat-plate, evacuated tube and photovoltaic-thermal collectors were considered along with absorption and adsorption chiller units. In the present study, different system configurations, localities and time bases were considered to investigate the energy and economic performance of the system. The model of the solar dish and collector arrangement overestimates the produced energy by less than 5% as compared to the experimental study. The results show that the space cooling demand is matched in 23.6 and 46.2% by solar energy in Warsaw, while in Lisbon from 38.2 to 46.1%. The simple payback period of the investigated system configuration was for Warsaw between 18.1 years for the combination of flat plate collector and absorption chiller and 27.2 year for the photovoltaic-thermal collector with adsorption chiller. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study presents an experimental and numerical investigation of a solar dish system with thermal collectors for heating and cooling purposes. The dynamic simulation shows that different configurations of solar energy collection and thermally driven chillers can effectively match space cooling demand. The overestimation of produced energy by the model compared to experimental study is less than 5%. The results also indicate varying simple payback periods for different system configurations, highlighting the economic feasibility of solar heating and cooling applications.