Solar

Over a year Ireland will receive on average 3 Kilowatt hours of solar energy per square metre per day. The South of the country tends to fare better with a slightly higher average.

Active solar:   the use of technologies to convert solar energy into usable heat, this heat can then be stored in water and be ready for use. Two of these technologies in common use today are:

The flat plate collector:  is a flat absorber plate which is covered with tempered glass, as the plate heats up in the suns radiation it passes the heat on the collector’s carrier fluid. This fluid now passes the heat on to water in a tank for storage.

The evacuated tube collector: Inside an evacuated tube is a solution of a low evaporation temperature. The sun’s heat evaporates this solution and its steam rises to the top of the tube where it passes its heat on to the carrier fluid. On giving up its heat the solution condenses and falls back to the bottom of the tube to collect more heat.

Passive solar: without any special technologies solar energy is collected using large south facing windows, the selected materials inside the building will absorb and slowly release the collected solar heat.

Photovoltaic: This technology converts solar radiation directly into DC electrical power which is then stored in batteries or converted to AC electrical power using an inverter.