Solar heating and cooling: Present and future development

T.S. Ge, R.Z. Wang, Z.Y. Xu, Q.W. Pan, S. Du, X.M. Chen, T. Ma, X.N. Wu, X.L. Sun and J.F. Chen

Renewable Energy, 2018, vol. 126, issue C, 1126-1140

Abstract: Using conventional fossil fuels causes both energy crisis and environmental pollution. Renewable energy with the merits of almost unlimited availability and environmental-friendliness provides a perfect solution to the problem. Solar energy is widely recognized as one of the most important renewable energy resources due to its even distribution, safety and serving as sources for others. In past decades, global solar thermal capacity increases rapidly and now it has been widely used worldwide to provide heating and cooling. To understand the current progress of relevant technologies and the future development, this paper briefly summarizes the current situation of solar heating and cooling, and then some new achievements in related areas and potential future market penetration are discussed. It is found that solar hot water heating system's development is in fast lane in recent years with evacuated tube solar collector dominating the mass market. How to integrate solar collecting system with different types of buildings is the main research and development direction for solar building heating system. Large-scale district water heating system and solar PVT system as the most promising solutions attract extensive attentions. For solar cooling, efforts have been made to improve the efficiency of conventional solar thermal cooling methods in terms of adsorption and absorption technology. In addition to technical development, economic analysis of solar heating and cooling system is also discussed. Return of investment period is widely adopted to evaluate the economic performance. Results reveal that low initial cost and advantageous allowance are the most efficient ways to make solar heating and cooling system economically attractive. This paper is presented and recommended by 5th International Conference on Nuclear and Renewable Energy Resources.

Keywords: Solar energy; Solar heating; Solar cooling; Development; Economic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148117305852
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:126:y:2018:i:c:p:1126-1140

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2017.06.081

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().