Heating by solar PV or solar thermal

Pincher

I've read through the forum but couldn't find a thread that fits my exact situation.

I am living in a space station in geostationary orbit above a planet, which rotates about its axis once every 24 hours. The planet orbits an M class sun as usual.

Due to the Clark Belt orbit I'm in, we get into the planet's shadow about 8 hours a day: and it gets bloody cold. Obviously we have no mains gas supply up here, so I am stuck with the stupid storage heater they installed before launch. When the sun is in view, the Dimplex storage heater is warmed up, using solar PV electricity, and gradually releases the heat during the 8 hours shadow period, but it always gets cold before the sun comes round, and I have to climb into my space suit for the last couple of hours. My Russian colleague fell asleep on watch and was frozen in his seat. God knows when we can ship his body back home.

Now, my question is, is it better to use the storage heater, or is it better to install some solar thermal panels, and heat up a cylinder of water, aka thermal store, and run radiators off it? We have quite a lot of recycled water lying around, so why not use it?

No hurry, I hear they retired the space shuttles, so god knows when the next supply ship will arrive. I'm keeping Dmitri's body outside, so he doesn't stink up the place.

penrhyn

Ashes to ashes, fun to funky, we know Major Toms a junky.:D

aelitaman

I have been looking into using solar thermal as a complementary source of heating and from my research there are three issues. The first is that you need a very large thermal store to get enough stored energy to use for a decent length of time. When you really need the heat then the sun aint shining. Second is that generally we use radiators at a high temp to heat a room quickly when required which would quickly deplete a store of energy. Third is when we need heating the sun is not too bright so the panels need to be designed to gather as much energy as posible in the winter which means in the summer they will be overheating the water in store which means you need a heat dump to get rid if the excess.

So the current thoughts are that heating using solar thermal is best done with a wet UFH system because they use lower temp of water than radiators you can run it from the moment you heat store gets up to temp i.e during the day. If you use a concrete floor over the UFH pipes then you have a large mass that can absorb a lot of energy during the day and release it slowly. Then when the thermal store temp drops after the sun stops shining you use an auxillary soruce of heat. People that have installed systems like this seem to indicate that the Thermal UFH is suffcient for all but the coldest and dimmist months.

Then for the summer you could have a hot tub installed and dump all the heat from the over speced thermal panels into that.

ManAtHome

Just leave the windows open during the day to let a bit more heat in - should allow you to turn the dimplex down a notch making it last longer.

ps - don't forget to shut the windows and draw the curtains before it goes dark.

Pincher

I knew it. Nobody ever actually READs what I write.

Except Penryn, of course, good rhyme, top marks.

macman

Give Kelvin a PM, he'll pop round and give you a quote by the sound of it.

Pincher

Well, the Chinese certainly have a big share of the orbital delivery market.:)

To those who missed it, Kelvin posted an advert, touting for solar panel business, yanked by the Mods.

Hmm, "Kelvin Absolut" would be a great name for a comic supervillain, like Mr. Freeze. Swedish, cool blonde type. Light blue lycra suit, white cape, white boots, diamond trim.

penrhyn

Indeed , my moma said to get things done you never should mess with Major Tom.

macman

And how many times have we advised on here that 'your circuit's dead, there's something wrong'?