Analysis of Solar Water Heating Systems in Single Family Houses - Comparison between Finnish and Spanish Situation

The objective of this thesis is to analyse the useful solar energy that can be obtained in thermal solar installations aimed for domestic hot water (DHW) heating in a single family house. The analysis has been made for two countries with different climate conditions (Finland and Spain). A virtual house has been implemented to have the same characteristics and specifications in both countries, so that the analysis results obtained do not depend on the physical characteristics, but only the climatologic ones. Firstly, a wide literature research about solar energy, its applications, its installations and systems has been done, for having a consistent theoretical background before the analysis are performed. Secondly, the climatologic and energetic situation in both countries has been analyzed. Then, the regulations, which for both countries are based on the European directives, have been studied for being able to perform the simulations accordingly. Then the simulations have been done with the software RETScreen, widely used for renewable installations. The aim of these simulations is to obtain the effects various issues on the total useful solar energy received and the behaviour of the installation when varying the following parameters: the tilt angle of the collectors, the type of collector (either glazed or evacuated tube collectors are used) and the total collector area. All in all, with these analyses, the optimal solution for the solar installation in both countries is pursued. And in the end, an economical analysis has been performed, to obtain the allowed investment for the optimized solar installation in each country; taking into account the common ways of DHW heating for single family houses. /Kir1