Various strategies concerning solar heating for a baseboard hot-water heating system

A computer simulation is performed using actual weather and solar radiation data in order to test the use of a solar flat plate collector system in conjunction with a computer equipped baseboard hot-water heating system. The computer automatically adjusts the operating temperature of the boiler in conjunction with the outside ambient air temperature. Various system strategies are tested including having the boiler in series or in parallel with solar storage as well as using several smaller storage tanks in place of one large storage tank. The results show that the use of a computer control to regulate boiler operating temperature can give a significant increase in the fraction of energy supplied by the solar supplement.