Solar collectors capture solar energy and feed it into the heating system via a heat transfer medium, which uses the energy for domestic water heating and, in some cases, to support home heating. A solar energy system can be combined with many other heating systems and supports them during warm summer months.
Solar energy systems use free-of-charge energy from the sun, so apart from minimal electricity costs there
are no energy costs to run the system.
Since it is very difficult to store solar energy in the long term, it is primarily available in summer. As a
result, its most obvious use is for domestic water heating – using this type of system to support home
heating offers only limited efficiency and potential cost savings.
If a gas condensing boiler is already used to provide heating, an additional solar energy system can reduce
hot water costs by around 60%.
A sufficiently large roof surface area, ideally south-facing, is required (optimum roof incline = 25-45°).
