Solar-thermal heating potential in the UK: A techno-economic whole-energy system analysis

We investigate the potential of solar-thermal collectorsas a sustainable heat-generation technology in the UK. The costs and performance of commercially-available collectors are surveyed and four representative collectors are investigated using a techno-economic model of solar heating for households. A parametric study of different collectorsand storage tank sizes is conducted to assess the potential and economics of different system layouts. It is shown that moderately-sized systems with a collector area of 4m2 and a tank size of 150L can provide up to 70% of the domestic hot water demand of a typical household in the UK. Based on the data from the solar-thermal heating model at household scale, performance maps are developed to estimate the heat output from different systems under varying operating conditions. These are then used to assess solar-thermal systems in a heating-sector decarbonisation model.The model is a mixed-integer linear programming model that optimises the capacity expansion of the UK domestic heating sector until 2050 as well as the annual operating schedules of the different technologies. It is found that solar-thermal heating requires incentives in order to be competitive with hydrogen boilers or electric heat pumps. However, if solar thermal collectors are deployed, they provide significant system value by reducing the demand for carbon-neutral hydrogen or electricity. An investment incentive of £3,000per solar-thermal system leads to a deployment of over150GW of solar-thermal capacity by 2050, which reduces the annual hydrogen demand by 240 TWh compared to the baseline without solar-thermal heating, while the electricity demand increases by 90 TWh due to heat pumps and electric resistive heatersbeing used as backup heatingtechnologies