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In the course of building 2 solar-thermal direct-air this past fall & winter, I learned something about the best orientation.
We live at latitude 50 degC, and we get winter, with occasional snow and lots of frost. Since the goal was to build a solar collector that produced harvested maximum overall energy (of any form), and our winter heating was by far the lion's share of our overall energy consumption, I opted for direct-air solar-thermal.
For the 1st collector, I was concerned about optimizing the panel's angle of incidence pertaining to the altitude of the sun above the horizon. See attached image files. It works great, but once winter arrived, I discovered the nightly frost & occasional snow required daily clearing if the panel was to remain effective. I ended up a building flip-up/down cover.
Heeding the advice of others, my next collector was oriented vertically, and located under an overhang. The ground in front of the collector is typically snow-white during the heating season, so it still works great... better in fact. It is also located beneath the roof overhang, so frost doesn't accumulate at all. It's practically maintenance free, and the power/area ratio of the vertical collector exceeds that of the angled collector.
Of course if you live closer to the equator, you need to make sure the overhang will not shade your collector.
Our solar-thermal collectors have slashed 25% off of our winter heating bill thus far. The next project is a solar-thermal parabolic mirror hot-water pre-heater for our domestic hot-water.
We live at latitude 50 degC, and we get winter, with occasional snow and lots of frost. Since the goal was to build a solar collector that produced harvested maximum overall energy (of any form), and our winter heating was by far the lion's share of our overall energy consumption, I opted for direct-air solar-thermal.
For the 1st collector, I was concerned about optimizing the panel's angle of incidence pertaining to the altitude of the sun above the horizon. See attached image files. It works great, but once winter arrived, I discovered the nightly frost & occasional snow required daily clearing if the panel was to remain effective. I ended up a building flip-up/down cover.
Heeding the advice of others, my next collector was oriented vertically, and located under an overhang. The ground in front of the collector is typically snow-white during the heating season, so it still works great... better in fact. It is also located beneath the roof overhang, so frost doesn't accumulate at all. It's practically maintenance free, and the power/area ratio of the vertical collector exceeds that of the angled collector.
Of course if you live closer to the equator, you need to make sure the overhang will not shade your collector.
Our solar-thermal collectors have slashed 25% off of our winter heating bill thus far. The next project is a solar-thermal parabolic mirror hot-water pre-heater for our domestic hot-water.
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