Renewables

Understanding Solar Water Heaters

Solar Heating
Sun is radiating energy in the form of heat and light. A dark coloured material surface, when exposed to sun, absorbs most of the heat and the material gets heated up. As a result there would be rise in temperature of the associated. Copper’s combination of high heat conductivity, resistance to atmospheric and aqueous corrosion, ease of fabrication, sealability (joining by soldering), mechanical strength and longevity offer strong advantages over any other material in solar heating applications.

Advantages of Solar Water Heating System
It is economical. A single collector system provides an equivalent of 5 KWH to 6 KWH of heat replacement on an average.

Potential of Solar Water Heaters in India
Solar thermal technologies hold significant promise for India with high solar insulation of 4 – 6.5 kWh/ sq.m /day for an average of 280 sunny days. Solar water heating system is a commercially viable and technologically mature product which has existed in the country for many years. Yet, against a technical potential of 45 million sq. km. of collector area only a little over 2.5 million sq. km of collector area has been installed. This works out to a little more than 2 sq.m./1000 people as against countries like Israel and Cyprus, which have over 500 sq.m./1000 people.

Wind Energy
The primary use of copper in wind energy technologies is in the coil windings in the stator and rotor portions of the generator, in the high-voltage power cable conductors, transformer coils and earthing.

Photovoltaics
Copper forms part of the materials presently used for photovoltaic solar cells, in the technology’s cabling, earthing, inverter, transformers and photovoltaic cell ribbons.