Utilization of f-Chart Method for Designing Solar Thermal Heating System

Solar energy systems convert solar energy into useful energy.Design of solar systems is complicated because of the presence of both predictable and unpredictable parameters.Predictable parameters include performance characteristics of collectors and other components whereas unpredictable parameters include weather data such as solar radiation, ambient temperature which exhibits nonlinear behavior.This nonlinear dependence makes it difficult to analyze the performance by simply observing their response to short-term or average weather conditions.Thus this work analyzes the use of f-chart method in designing liquid solar heating systems due to its simplicity and ability to estimate the fraction of total heating load supplied by solar heating system.This method is widely used in designing both active and passive solar heating systems, especially in selecting the sizes and type of solar collectors that provide the hot water and heating loads.This paper includes estimation of percentage of load contributed with a fixed collector area of 1 m 2 for a solar water heating system in Hyderabad.