Solar Hot Water Systems Case Studies

Freesource Energy Schuco Solar Thermal

Location - Eastbourne
Panels – 2 x Schuco Compact line flat plate panels
Hot water cylinder volume – 160L vented

This installation was part of the East Sussex Energy Partnership, run by Climate Energy. The scheme is run to give fully funded solar thermal installations to home owners who are classed as fuel poor. This refers to home owners who have utility bill expenses that total more than 10% of their income.

The project in this example was calculated at being 13.25% fuel poor. This was due to the customer having very high gas and electricity bills. The scheme gave the go ahead for the customer to have the install and the property was fitted with a new 160L vented hot water cylinder and two Schuco Compact line solar thermal panels, which was correctly sized to the property and the customers usage.

The install was completed half way through our summer time and the customers have been very happy with the installation and have managed to turn off their boiler until mid September, which will do the required job of lowering their gas bills.

New Homes at River’s Gate, Walker, Newcastle

Installed area - 138 m²

Carbon dioxide avoided – 11.5 tonnes/year

Energy saving - 59,000 kWh/year

River’s Gate is a development of 68 dwellings in phase one, comprising 51 houses and 17 flats.  The development is a mixture of houses for sale, shared ownership and social housing for rent.  Places for People aimed to achieve an EcoHomes Excellent rating for the development, and Viridian Solar was brought in to help contribute to this by providing renewable energy totalling more than 10% of the predicted energy use.

10% Renewable Energy Target

Viridian Solar worked closely with the design team to identify appropriate houses on the site, and calculate a solar panel provision that exceeded the target. 

It is a common misconception that solar panels must face between Southeast and Southwest.  While this may be optimal, useful solar benefit can be obtained from roofs facing anywhere between East and West on the south side and the difference in annual energy is not a big as people imagine.

Consequently, although the site layout was fixed before the decision to use solar water heating was taken, it was still possible for forty four out of fifty one houses to benefit from solar.  Those that could not had mono-pitch roofs facing towards the North, or were over-shaded by adjacent roofs.

In addition, three flats were also fitted with solar panels to take the total renewable energy saving to 11.3% of the site energy use predicted by the government’s SAP calculator.

Installation

Viridian’s Clearline solar panels are unique in the way that they separate the roofing work from plumbing tasks.  The solar panels were fitted by the roofing contractor, without the need for the plumbers to work at height, and giving a single point of responsibility for the weather-tightness of the roof.  The plumbing contractor attended at the normal time in the build programme to make connections between the solar panel, the control set, and a twin-coil hot water cylinder.  In this way, the main contractor, Mansell Construction Services Ltd. could work with the subcontractors of its own choosing.

Ashleigh Gibson, Blaydon, Newcastle

The Schuco Solar Thermal System of 5.4m² (in collector size) provides approximately 200 litres of hot water per day. The Schuco designed panels are the ultimate in flat plate solar technology and are very neat and compact in design.

Ashleigh lives in a conservation area in Newcastle, and was delighted to win planning approval for this bold scheme. The use of a facade system means that the house can benefit from the south facing wall, and gain the maximum solar energy.

We installed and commissioned Ashleigh’s solar thermal water heating system in April 2008 and she’s delighted with the results.

Key Features

• Well outperforms emersion heaters from spring to August
• Panel/collectors made with ‘Low E safety glass’
• High absorption of 95% (of solar radiation)
• High end quality German engineered system