Introducing Solar Thermal
What is solar thermal?
Solar thermal technologies transform solar energy into useful heat or cooling. Solar thermal technologies on the current market are efficient and highly reliable products, providing solar energy for a wide range of applications.
Which are the applications for solar thermal systems?
Domestic hot water is currently the most frequent application, although solar thermal is also being increasingly used for space heating in residential and commercial buildings, swimming pool heating, industrial and agricultural process heat, solar assisted cooling, district heating, and other applications requiring heat or cold. Solar thermal collectors can also be used to produce electricity (solar thermal power).
Why use solar thermal energy?
Solar thermal provides clean, safe and renewable energy. Solar radiation is free, maintenance costs are very low and the systems work for decades. Solar thermal increases the predictability of heating costs and reduces dependency on fuels imported from unstable regions. Solar thermal is the modern solution for heating and cooling.
What are the ecological benefits?
Solar thermal replaces polluting and imported fuels such as oil, coal, gas and nuclear, thus reducing the problems associated with those technologies. In particular, solar thermal: - helps to mitigate climatic change as it does not emit CO2 (see also the page Climate Protection and Solar Thermal)
- reduces the risk of ecological catastrophes linked to oil transport
- does not produce radioactive waste as in the case of nuclear energy
Can solar thermal be used globally?
Solar thermal can be used at nearly all latitudes. Some of the largest solar thermal installations are located in Scandinavian countries.
Pictures of Solar Thermal Systems
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Download this diagram of a combined solar domestic hot water and space heating system ("combisystem"):
004E_SolarHeatingSystem.tif (1,861 kB)
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Description: Solar thermal systems offer a wide variety of system configurations ranging from quite simple thermosyhpon systems to forced systems in different configurations
More info: "Solar Thermal Systems", Solarpraxis 2003; "Sun in Action II", ESTIF 2003
Download: This page as a nicely layouted PDF (81 kB) or as part of the complete ECP (570 kB).
Copyright notice: The content of the European Communications Pack (ECP) - including the graphics - may be used freely without charge under the condition that the source is appropriately mentioned (in most cases ESTIF, except where explicitly specified).
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