Solar heating

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Solar heating

Solar heating is the usage of solar energy to provide process, space

Space heating

Space heating is the heating of a space, usually enclosed, such as a house or room. A space heater keeps the air and surroundings at a comfortable temperature for people or animals, or even plants in a greenhouse....
or water heating

Water heating

Water heating is a thermodynamics process using an energy source to heating water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water are for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating....
. The heating of water is covered in solar hot water

Solar hot water

Solar hot water is water heated by the use of solar energy.Solar heating systems are generally composed of solar Solar thermal energy collectors, a fluid system to move the heat from the collector to its point of usage....
. Solar heating design is divided into two groups:

Also solar energy can be used to cool (solar cooling).

very first solar heating factory in the world was built by Jewish immigrants, from South Africa, in Ashqelon Israel in 1952. In 1980 a law was passed in Israel making solar heating mandatory.

pical household solar heating system consists of a solar panel (or solar collector) with a heat transfer fluid flowing through it to transport the heat energy collected to somewhere useful, usually a hot water tank or household radiators.

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Encyclopedia

Solar heating is the usage of solar energy to provide process, space

Space heating

Water heating

Solar hot water

Active solar
Active solar

Active solar technologies are employed to convert solar energy into usable light, heat, cause air-movement for ventilation or cooling, or store heat for future use....
heating uses pump
Pump

A pump is a device used to move fluids, such as gases, liquids or Slurry. A pump displaces a volume by physical or mechanical action. One common misconception about pumps is the thought that they create pressure....
s which move air
Earth's atmosphere

The Earth's atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by the Earth's gravity. Dry air contains roughly 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% Carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, and trace amounts of other gases....
or a liquid
Liquid

Liquid is one of the principal states of matter. A liquid is a fluid that has the particles loose and can freely form a distinct surface at the boundaries of its bulk material....
from the solar collector
Solar collector

A solar collector is a device for extracting the energy of the sun directly into a more usable or storable form. The energy in sunlight is in the form of electromagnetic radiation from the infrared to the ultraviolet wavelengths....
into the building or storage area.

Passive solar
Passive solar

Passive solar technologies are means of using solar energy for useful energy without use of active mechanical systems . Such technologies convert sunlight into usable heat , cause air-movement for ventilating, or future use, with little use of other energy sources....
heating does not require electrical or mechanical equipment, and may rely on the design and structure of the house to collect, store and distribute heat throughout the building (passive solar building design
Passive solar building design

Passive solar buildings aim to maintain interior thermal comfort throughout the sun's daily and annual cycles whilst reducing the requirement for HVAC....
).

Also solar energy can be used to cool (solar cooling).

History

The very first solar heating factory in the world was built by Jewish immigrants, from South Africa, in Ashqelon Israel in 1952. In 1980 a law was passed in Israel making solar heating mandatory.

How solar heating works

A typical household solar heating system consists of a solar panel (or solar collector) with a heat transfer fluid flowing through it to transport the heat energy collected to somewhere useful, usually a hot water tank or household radiators. The solar panel is located somewhere with good light levels throughout the day, often on the roof of the building. A pump pushes the heat transfer liquid (often just treated water) through the panel. The heat is thus taken from the panel and transferred to a storage container.

Other uses

Solar heating also refers to the heating of any objects, including buildings, cars, through solar radiation. Solar heating depends on the solar radiation, surface area

Surface area

Surface area is how much exposed area an object has. It is expressed in square units. If an object has flat Face , its surface area can be calculated by adding together the areas of its faces....
, surface reflectance

Reflectivity

In photometry and heat transfer, reflectivity is the fraction of incident radiation Reflection by a surface. In general it must be treated as a directional property that is a function of the reflected direction, the incident direction, and the incident wavelength....
, surface emissivity

Emissivity

The emissivity of a material is the ratio of energy Radiation by a particular material to energy radiated by a black body at the same temperature....
, ambient temperature

Room temperature

Room temperature is a common term to denote a certain temperature within enclosed space at which humans are accustomed.Room temperature is thus often indicated by general human comfort, with the common range of 10celsius to 23?C , though climate may acclimatize people to higher or lower temperatures....
, and thermal convection

Convection

Convection in the most general terms refers to the movement of molecules within fluids . Convection is one of the major modes of heat transfer and mass transfer....
from wind. With objects on Earth, solar heating reaches a state of temperature equilibrium as the heat imparted by the sun is offset by the heat given off through reflection

Reflection (physics)

Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an wiktionary:interface between two differentmedium so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated....
, radiation

Radiation

In physics, radiation describes any process in which energy emitted by one body travels through a medium or through space, ultimately to be absorbed by another body....
, and convection. White

White

White is a color, the Color vision#Physiology of color perception which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in near equal amount and with high brightness compared to the surroundings....
objects stay dramatically cooler than other objects because the most important variables are characteristics of the surface, reflectance, emissivity, convection and surface area. Silver

Silver

Silver is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal....
y objects get hot even though they are excellent reflectors because they are very poor in heat emission. Human skin, and many other living surfaces, like tree leaves, have near perfect emissivity (~1.0), and so stay pretty cool. A perfect sunscreen

Sunscreen

Sunscreen is a lotion, spray, gel or other topical product that absorbs or reflects the sun's ultraviolet radiation and protects the skin.Sunscreens contain one or more UV filters of which there are three main types :...
is a dye

Dye

A dye can generally be described as a colored substance that has an Chemical affinity to the Wiktionary:substrate to which it is being applied....
that perfectly absorbs, with high emissivity, or perfectly reflects, ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays, in the range 400 nanometer to 10 nm, and energies from 3 Electron volt to 124 eV....
and infrared

Infrared

Infrared radiation is electromagnetic radiation whose wavelength is longer than that of visible light , but shorter than that of terahertz radiation and microwaves ....
while being transparent in visible light

Visible spectrum

The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visual perception to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light....
.

It is worth noting that it is impossible for any material to be a good absorber of a given frequency and at the same time a poor emitter of the same frequency ( or the other way around). The difference in absorption and emission arises because the radiation emitted by a relatively cold object like a human, has much lower frequency than the radiation emitted by a hot object like the sun. Materials which have high emissivity for low frequencies but high absorption at higher frequencies will therefore stay much cooler than materials which have high absorption of high frequencies and low emission of low frequencies.

Worldwide

Solar heating in Europe

Solar heating systems with glazed collectors* (kW_th)
Country	Total (2007)	Added in 2007	Added in 2006	Added in 2005	Added in 2004
Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....	6 295 800	665 000	1 050 000	665 000	525 000
Greece Greece Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....	2 499 140	198 100	168 000	154 350	150 500
Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....	2 024 839	196 700	204 868	163 429	127 816
Italy Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....	770 161	171 500	130 200	88 941	68 417
Spain Spain Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....	674 916	183 400	122 500	74 760	63 000
France France France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....	609 420	178 500	154 000	85 050	36 400
Cyprus Cyprus Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....	437 640	45 500	42 000	35 000	21 000
Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....	356 286	45 802	36 304	27 392	21 812
Denmark Denmark Denmark is a Scandinavian country in northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries....	269 696	16 100	17 710	14 875	14 000
Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....	236 839	13 930	10 280	14 174	18 410
UK United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....	213 444	37 800	37 800	19 600	17 500
Sweden Sweden Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....	183 676	17 826	19 977	15 835	14 041
Poland Poland Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....	164 428	46 900	28 980	19 390	20 230
Portugal Portugal Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....	144 165	17 500	14 000	11 200	7 000
Belgium Belgium * A small German-speaking Community of Belgium exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political and cultural conflicts are reflected in the history of Belgium and a complex Communities and regions of Belgium....	102 283	29 400	24 945	14 164	10 290
Czech Republic Czech Republic The Czech Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country borders Poland to the northeast, Germany to the west, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east....	92 211	17 500	15 421	10 885	8 575
Slovenia Slovenia Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in southern Central Europe bordering Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north....	84 910	8 400	4 830	3 360	1 260
Slovakia Slovakia Slovakia . It was amended in September 1998 to allow direct election of the president and again in February 2001 due to EU admission requirements....	57 225	6 300	5 950	5 250	3 850
Romania Romania Romania is a country located in Southeastern Europe Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on the Black Sea....	48 720	350	280	280	280
Ireland Ireland Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....	21 553	10 500	3 500	2 450	1 400
Malta Malta Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....	20 552	3 850	3 150	2 800	2 951
Bulgaria Bulgaria The state of Bulgaria , Scientific transliteration Balgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria has played a significant role in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe for over fourteen centuries....	17 570	1 750	1 540	1 400	1 260
Finland Finland Finland , officially the Republic of Finland , is a Nordic countries situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland....	14 345	2 800	2 380	1 668	1 141
Luxembourg Luxembourg Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a small landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany....	13 230	2 100	1 750	1 330	1 190
Hungary Hungary Hungary , officially in English the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia....	9 975	5 600	700	700	1 050
Latvia Latvia Latvia The Latvians are a Baltic peoples culturally related to the Estonians and Lithuanians, with the Latvian language having many similarities with Lithuanian language, but not with the Estonian language....	3 745	1 050	840	700	350
Lithuania Lithuania Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....	2 415	490	420	350	350
Estonia Estonia Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Finland across the Gulf of Finland, to the west by Sweden across the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russia ....	1 029	245	210	175	175
Total GW_{_th}	15.37	1.92	2.10	1.43	1.14
* = The relation between collector area and capacity is 1 m² = 0.7 kW_thermal

Solar heating

History

How solar heating works

Other uses

Worldwide

Solar heating in Europe

See also

External links