A Year in the Life of a Passive House with Solar Energy Store: International Conference on Sustainable Energy Storage, Belfast, Northern Ireland 21 to 23 February 2011

Due to a unique combination of factors, low energy and passive houses in Ireland are particularly well suited to exploiting the advantages of solar thermal energy. However few examples exist of how this synergy can be exploited successfully in Ireland, illustrating the manner in which sustainable fossil fuelfree space heating can be provided.
This paper presents the design rationale and provides an overview of the performance of a real installation over a full year cycle. Key findings for this unique project are presented including
(i) Design Criteria showing that that for the house under study, the heating season can be reduced from 10 months to 4 months using direct solar heating from a 10.6m2 evacuated tube solar array,
(ii) By storing excess solar energy, it has been demonstrated that the heating season was reduced by a further two months,
(iii) Seasonal Store Mean Bulk Tank Temperatures, and associated soil Temperatures and Tank Losses and system Efficiency,
(iv) Achieved Solar Fractions for DHW and Space Heating of 93% and 56% respectively and finally
(v) Costs breakdown for the solar DHW, solar Space heating and Seasonal Energy Store summing to a total installed system cost for the sustainable solar heating system of €27,637.