Technical and economical assessment of integrated collector storage solar water heaters

Solar water heating implementation has as effect greenhouse gas emission reduction. Romanian solar collector market and solar technologies implementation are not yet developed because the market is dominated by high cost equipment. Due to this, the author deduces that the use of simpler technologies, with lower technical performances, but inferior capital cost, will induce higher solar energy penetration into the market. One of the cheapest solutions for solar water heating is Integrated Collector Storage Solar Water Heaters technology. The author purpose an analytical method for technical and economical solar collector's performance assessment. Technical performances of the solar collectors will be compared for different types of ICSSWH's. Systems calculation will be done analytically. The starting point of the estimation is the heat balance on solar collector's boundary. Using heat transfer equation, energy fluxes and equipment efficiencies during collection and store time can be calculated. Technical performances for market existing solar collectors will be reminded. The paper conclusions are valuable for solar hot water design. (author)