Performance Monitoring of Solar Heating Systems

Summary

The work has been carried out in three phases by a coordinated group of European experts, called the Performance Monitoring Group (PMG), 100% funded by the CEC. The aim has been to collect data from monitored solar heating systems in Europe and draw conclusions about system performance, and this has resulted in a series of publications including data from over 100 monitored solar projects (1,2,3,4,5,13,15). To achieve this, standard Reporting Formats have been prepared and distributed to allow meaningful comparisons between different monitored projects (7,8,9,10,11,12). Finally, a detailed understanding of system design and construction has been obtained, enabling improved designs of ‘second generation’ systems to emerge. Data from suitable monitored solar projects has been collected in each European community, via the local PMG representatives, and analysis work has been carried out by the coordinator, under the scrutiny of the Group. In the analysis, attention has been paid not only to overall performance achievement, but also to more detailed aspects of design, construction and cost. In the case of space heating systems (active and passive) attention is also given to the design of the houses themselves. Considerable work has been done on the improvement of monitoring techniques, and detailed guidelines with recommendations for standard ‘levels’ of monitoring (i.e. degrees of complexity) have been published (6).

The results show that significant improvements are possible in system design and construction, likely to result in higher outputs per unit collector area and/or lower capital costs. This formed the basis of a related work programme carried out by the PMG and presented separately in session 5B (14).