Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes, 4th Edition

Preface

This fourth edition emphasizes solar system design and analysis using simulations. The design of many systems that use conventional energy sources (e.g., oil, gas, and electricity) use a worst-case environmental condition—think of a building heating system. If the system can maintain the building temperature during the coldest period, it will be able to handle all less severe conditions. To be sure, even building heating systems are now using simulations during the design phase. In addition to keeping the building comfortable during the worst conditions, various design choices can be made to reduce annual energy use.

This and earlier editions of this book describe TRNSYS (pronounced Tran-sis), a general system simulation program (see Chapter 19). Like all heating and air conditioning systems, a solar system can be thought of as a collection of components. TRNSYS has hundreds of component models, and the TRNSYS language is used to connect the components together to form a system. Following the Preface to the First Edition is the Introduction where a ready-made TRNSYS program (called CombiSys) is described that simulates a solar-heated house with solar-heated domestic hot water. TRANSED, a front-end program for TRNSYS is used so it is not necessary to learn how to develop TRNSYS models to run CombiSys. CombiSys can be freely downloaded from the John Wiley website (http://www.wiley.com/go/solarengineering4e).

CombiSys provides an input window where various design options can ...