Performance Analysis of Solar Water Heaters and their Applications for Space Heating /

Abstract

Pakistan is suffering from energy crisis and situation is worsening day by day due to lack of careful planning and implementation of the energy related policies. Both Electricity and Natural gas load shedding have appeared as major issues on country’s economic and social horizon. Natural gas being serving the major resource in Pakistan energy mix, is unable to fulfill industrial and domestic loads demands, especially in winter season due to excessive utilization in space and water heating of domestic and commercial sectors. Although Government has been given priority to domestic and commercial (educational institutes and markets) sectors by continuously shifting the resource to these sectors and supply has increased up to 232 billion cubic feet due to improper planning and utilization. Industrial sector which was relying on natural gas is being unable to continue production and has led to economic crisis. Pakistan lies in a region of high solar radiations ideally suited for solar thermal projects. So in order to exploit this Potential research must be carried out to for techno-economic evaluation of solar thermal projects for climatic conditions of Pakistan. This research was carried out to analyze the Performance of commonly available solar water heaters for climatic conditions of Pakistan and to optimize their Performance for Space heating systems. Results shows that for educational building situated in climatic conditions of Quetta, if utilizes solar space heating system can save 170 mm Btu natural gas annually. IRR of solar space heating scheme was found to be 20% and payback period is ~6 years which is quite attractive to be considered. Sensitivity analysis shows that fuel cost (base case) is most sensitive parameter. Risk analysis of project input parameters reveals that project is quite safe to consider as IRR is concentrated between 18.5-21 % range.