Field Measurement and Evaluation of the Passive and Active Solar Heating Systems for Residential Building Based on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Case

Zhijian Liu,Di Wu,Miao Jiang,Wensheng Ma,Hancheng Yu

doi:10.3390/en10111706

Abstract

Passive and active solar heating systems have drawn much attention and are widely used in residence buildings in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau due to its high radiation intensity. In fact, there is still lack of quantitative evaluation of the passive and active heating effect, especially for residential building in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau areas. In this study, three kinds of heating strategies, including reference condition, passive solar heating condition and active solar heating condition, were tested in one demonstration residential building. The hourly air temperatures of each room under different conditions were obtained and analyzed. The results show the indoor air temperature in the living room and bedrooms (core zones) was much higher than that of other rooms under both passive and active solar heating conditions. In addition, the heating effect with different strategies for core zones of the building was evaluated by the ratio of indoor and outdoor degree hour, which indicates that solar heating could effectively reduce the traditional energy consumption and improve the indoor thermal environment. The passive solar heating could undertake 49.8% degree hours for heating under an evaluation criterion of 14 °C and the active solar heating could undertake 75% degree hours for heating under evaluation criterion of 18 °C, which indicated that solar heating could effectively reduce the traditional energy consumption and improve the indoor thermal environment in this area. These findings could provide reference for the design and application of solar heating in similar climate areas.

Highlights

The rapidly growing use of the world’s energy has gradually become a worldwide focus of attention, and current predictions show that this growing trend will continue
It can be seen that the core zone rooms have the highest temperature throughout decreasing slightly after 14:00
The indoor temperature characteristics of one residential building in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau were tested with three heating strategies, including a reference condition, a passive solar heating condition and an active solar heating condition

Summary

Introduction

The rapidly growing use of the world’s energy has gradually become a worldwide focus of attention, and current predictions show that this growing trend will continue. It was estimated that the heating energy requirement in Chinese cold and severe cold zones could reach as high as 75%. Of total energy consumption, especially for the Qinghai-Tibet plateau areas [4,5,6]. The conventional fuels could not burn adequately due to the high altitude and low oxygen content in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. It wastes large amounts of conventional energy, and produces harmful gases, which seriously threatens the fragile atmosphere and ecological environment [7,8,9]. The solar energy resource in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau is very abundant due to its clean atmosphere, high transparency

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion