Design and co-simulation of a seasonal solar thermal system for a Canadian single--family detached house

For the 2009 residential sector in Ontario, Canada, 81.5% of the secondary energy consumed was for space heating and domestic hot water preparation. The majority of domestic space heating and hot water systems in Ontario are natural gas-fired systems, which generated 16.1 Mt of CO 2e in 2009. Working towards reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from this sector, there may be potential in alternative energy technologies. One potential candidate is solar "combisystems" , which supply both space heating and domestic hot water. This type of system has received considerable attention recently as an alternative to conventional heating systems.;This work was carried out as part of the Carleton Research and Innovation in Sustainable Energy (C-RISE) project at Carleton University. The C-RISE project is a test facility for innovative residential technologies. The focus of this thesis was the design and simulation of the seasonal solar thermal energy system for a single-house scale application. To carry out the analysis, a numerical representation of the C-RISE house was developed in the ESP-r simulation tool. A literature review and "best practices" were used to develop a layout of a two-tank water-based seasonal solar thermal energy system. A 300 L diurnal tank was specified to supply domestic hot water and a buried concrete water tank seasonal storage with variable volume was specified to supply space heating to the C-RISE house. To simulate the performance of the solar thermal system, a model was created in the TRNSYS simulation tool. Interaction between the ESP-r and TRNSYS models was then facilitated by the use of a co-simulation tool called the "Harmonizer.".;Several parametric and sensitivity analyses were carried out using co-simulation. The annual performance of varying combinations of seasonal storage volumes, solar collector areas, and seasonal storage insulation levels were examined. It was found that when a fixed collector area was used, increases in seasonal storage volume initially improved annual performance up to a critical point. Beyond that point further increases in storage volume decreased annual performance. It was also found that the annual performance of the solar thermal system was sensitive to the level of stratification in both the diurnal and seasonal tanks. Finally, to assess the two-tank system configuration, a "selected case" was analyzed. This system contained 34.5 m2 of collector area and a 80 m3 buried seasonal storage with 45 cm of extruded polystyrene insulation. The results from the co-simulation found that this system could provide 89.2% of the space heating and domestic hot water thermal demands of the C-RISE house.;The challenge of using solar energy is the intermittence of the solar resource and the mismatch between supply and demand of solar energy. Solar availability is typically highest at noon and during the summer months. For Canadian climates however, thermal demands are normally highest during the winter. To address this seasonal mismatch, past researchers have proposed the use of seasonal thermal energy storage to carry over summer solar collection for winter use and dampen out periods of low solar availability.