Solar thermal systems for large high rise buildings in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia and Southeast Asia in general, is a very suitable region for implementing solar technologies because Malaysia is located near the equatorial line, where sunlight remains strong and stable throughout the year. The average solar radiation per month is 400–600MJ/m, so Malaysia should fully utilise solar energy because it is clean and sustainable. Solar energy can be considered as renewable energy that is environmentally friendly and can be continually replenished from time to time. The use of renewable energy is expected to increase exponentially in the future because natural resources could become depleted due to the increasing usage due to growing population in a world hungry for energy consumption for domestic, industrial and leisure purposes. Solar energy can provide infinite amount of energy because the sun can last for another few billions of years from now. So, many advanced nations have developed solar technologies to be implemented in a variety of sectors that include power generation and domestic water heating. The geographical location of Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries has enabled this region to be different from Western European countries that could only utilise solar energy through technology. Malaysia is located near the equatorial line, and so the sunlight in Malaysia remains strong and stable throughout the year. The average solar radiation per month for Malaysia is 400–600MJ/m, and hence the country has a very high prospect to develop large-scale solar power plants. For now, Malaysian government is putting a lot of effort to promote solar energy use in Malaysia. The initial implementation of solar energy in Malaysia is for domestic solar water heaters. Unfortunately, the use of solar water heaters domestically and commercially is still low. According to estimate, around 45,000 buildings in Malaysia are appropriate for solar thermal usage, but 10% of them are not suitable because of roof shadings and structure. Different economic sectors in Malaysia can provide 110,000,000m of building surfaces for solar thermal applications and so about 75GW of power can be produced from this application. The photovoltaic (PV) technology was first built in Malaysia during 1980s in order to provide electricity to rural areas. Tenaga Nasional Bierhad, the national utility company, began to set up grid-connected PV systems as an alternative for national power utility and power production in 1998. One PV system was built at a British Petroleum petrol station along KESAS highway with 8 kWp capacity and another one built at the Solar Energy Research Institute at National University of Malaysia with 5.5 kWp capacity. In 2000, the first Malaysian Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) system was built in Port Dickson with 3.15 kWp capacity. Malaysia’s universities are focusing on five majors of R&D for solar technologies, including inverters, PV concentrators, cells fabrications, hybrid systems and energy conversion tracking systems. The funding for the research in PV technologies is provided by Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI). Malaysian government also provides tax incentives so that a portion of the total cost of installing PV system can be deducted. The Feed-InTariffs can be the most promising policy because the utility pays a prestige price for the grid-connected PV electricity generated by system proprietors, and there is a 20-year of guarantee for the price. In short, Malaysia has a huge prospect to implement large-scale solar thermal systems. A solar collector is a type of heat exchanger that converts solar radiant energy into heat energy. Flat plate collector (FPC) is a type of solar thermal collectors. It will require minimal maintenance and is mechanically simple and with low installation cost. Major applications of solar energy like solar water heating, industrial process heating and air conditioning are using FPCs. Thermal performance for FPCs is treated in concise details, and the equations for collector performance can be reduced to simpler forms for performance analysis. Evacuated tube collectors (ETCs) contain heat pipe inside a vacuum-sealed tube. The