As part of the design of a UK secondary school, we were looking at using solar thermal panels. Normally, solar thermal doesn’t work well in schools because in the UK almost half of your energy is harvested in the summer when the building isn’t in use.
As a solution, we talked about trying to bias the output of solar thermal panels towards winter months by increasing their inclination. By putting them at a steeper pitch, you expose less collector area to direct sun in summer and, providing the spacing is sufficient, more area to low angle winter sun. (more…)
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