Solar Thermal Collectors – What are Solar Thermal Collectors?
The second type of Solar Panels are Solar thermal collectors are devices designed to collect and use the heat given off by the sun to create renewable energy. This technique of using the suns heat to heat something else in order to create renewable energy is used on a smaller domestic scale with solar water heating, but the term ‘Solar Thermal Collectors’ is generally reserved for describing large civil projects that use solar thermal collectors as a means to generate renewable energy by heating water to create steam that spins turbines. Solar thermal collectors are most commonly used in Solar Power Plants, these come in many different varieties and will be looked at in greater detail in the future.
There are numerous kinds of solar thermal collectors ranging from simple flat plate systems and evacuated tubes that heat water running through them to warm people’s bath water on homes. To large civil power generation plants that use parabolic dishes to direct sunlight onto an absorber tube in the centre that heats a steam turbine and ‘Power Towers’ that stand aloft like great sun gods in front of hundreds of mirrors that rotate with the sunlight in order to point their rays at a boiler on top of the tower that spins a steam turbine. There is a parabolic dish solar power plant in Nevada that covers 500 acres of desert and is due to be expanded even further, and there is huge a power tower is Spain. We will look at these and others in greater detail when we study solar power plants.
Solar Thermal Collector Advantages
Very high temperatures can be reached which is perfect for turning wind turbines. Solar thermal collectors are also more efficient than normal Photovoltaic Panels because they concentrate the heat. There are also cheaper than Photovoltaic Panels in the sense that large areas can be covered for less cost, as the mirrors needed are less expensive than solar cells.
Solar Thermal Collector Disadvantages
As with all kinds of solar panels, in diffused light conditions solar panels and especially solar thermal collectors do not work as well. In cloudy or hazy conditions, the diffused sunlight cannot be concentrated on a fixed point so the output of solar thermal collectors drops dramatically. This makes solar thermal collectors only suitable for places where sunlight is very common. Also to concentrate sunlight sun tracking systems needs to be installed to rotate the solar thermal collectors.
Tags: Renewable Energy, renewable energy products, Solar Panels, Solar Thermal Collectors