Development of Production Function for a Solar Water Heating System

Inspite of the present high worldwide interest in substituting solar produced energy for conventional non-renewable energy resources, very little research work could be found on development of production functions for solar systems. The production function for a solar system can help to predict its energy output in different conditions and also helps to obtain the economically optimum design for an application. This paper shows the development of production functions for a forced flow solar water heating system for residential buildings, hotels and hospitals in Mumbai. They give the annual solar energy output as a function of collector area, tank volume and daily average hot water requirement of the load.