CyprusLiving

On most houses I see two solar panels for hot water.
Our house is the same. During the sunny months this delivers plenty of hot water.
In winter, however, the yield sometimes does not suffice and I would like ore so not to use electrics.
Has anyone experimented and just added one or two panels?
What was the effect?
Thanks for sharing

Peter

Our solar panels are old and do not work well when its cold and cloudy etc, however my neighbours had new more efficient panels fitted last year and they are a lot better than the old ones.
Though we are further down than Tsada where as we had found was very cold and more cloudy during the winter, in fact Koili and Tsada are quite often in cloud and mist.

We recently changed from the old dual panel to a single high efficiency panel and the difference is very positive. I then installed a couple of panels to heat the pool and it raised the pool temperature substantially, in fact I had to cover both panels with plywood during the summer as the pool was too hot.

Even though there are only two of us, we added an extra panel on the roof and increased our hot water tank size from 150 to 200l. This helps when the sun isn't shining so much.

Thanks to both o.f you,

however, you are talking about replacing which always is an option.
I was thinking about just expanding/adding on.
Anyone experience?
Thanks

There is a brand new system available in CY which heats the hot water with 3-4 photo voltaic panels on the
roof which heat an cylinder somewhere installed in the house through electricity. Specially in winter when the normal thermo-syphon systems
have poor performance, the PV panels produce electricity even on rainy/windy days. Further advantage is that it is much more easy to find
a good position to the sun in winter without shading. In colder areas system is save of frosty conditions and in summer not overheating
as it comes with a controller to maximize the temperature to 75C. Finally this system looks much more nicer

https://www.solarwirtschaft.de/fileadmi ... Awasol.pdf

The cheaper (usually supplied) panels will fur up over time and reduce efficiency dramatically. Replace with a closed system using an antifreeze and hi tec glass panels will be more efficient and never freeze up .
A visit to Kayson factory at Yeroskipou will show you all the options .

I added another panel, it was bigger and much more efficient than the original fitted unit. But.
The original panel was on the south west facing roof and we added the new panel to the east facing roof. The difference was startling in the heat increase. The orientation can make a substantial difference to the output temperature. Also the hot pipes need to be lagged with the thicker foam covering and this must then be totally bound by tape or the birds will peck it off.
The new unit gives us as much hot water as we need from breakfast all the day through, as against the original panel being quite ineffective until noon. Hope this helps.

Re adding on, the new panels are mainly 1m x 1.5m or 2m, whereas the older panels are taller and more narrow eg 80cm x 176 cm , this means the pipes don't line up between the old and new panels. Therefore joining old to new is a pain, you need a short length of 28mm copper pipe and 2 45 degree elbows and 2 28mm compression couplings ,pipe is supplied in 6m lengths. Also there will be a 30cm appx gap between panels. If you do add a new panel try flushing old panels with descale first, also if your hot tank is old there could be 3 to 4 kg of limescale in there too.

Last year I cleaned my hot tank and fitted 2 X new 1m x 2m selective panels from kafson, not cheap but water output is enormous, had warm water even on bad days last winter.
One post on this thread speaks of a pv system, this has the advantage that the hot tank can be mounted inside , problem is most houses and their water systems are not very suitable for that kind of installation, all pipes are buried in concrete so there is no access to couple into them.
Another option is to mount the tank inside and pump the water through the long extended solar panel pipes, systems like this I have seen are not very good as they are connected with 22mm pipe, way too big far too much dead water in the loop, the system I installed used 12mm pipe and was very good, i strongly suspect it would be even better if I had used 10mm pipe,, less than 10mm and flow restriction will be a problem, theses systems are indirect, sealed, so can contain anti freeze/corrosion inhibitor.

tsadapeter wrote:On most houses I see two solar panels for hot water.
Our house is the same. During the sunny months this delivers plenty of hot water.
In winter, however, the yield sometimes does not suffice and I would like ore so not to use electrics.
Has anyone experimented and just added one or two panels?
What was the effect?
Thanks for sharing

Peter

We changed our solar panels a year or so ago as they were very old units had silted up, as far as anyone could tell me there was no way of removing the silt/sand from solar panels, so new panels (two) at €480 all in and fitted did the trick, we now get reasonable hot water on partial cloudy days of a Cyprus winter, on the occasions of no sun then usually you will need to use your immersion heating, also remembering in winter it will go cold regarding water at nights, so if you are someone who has to have a shower in the morning again you would need to boost your hot water via the immersion heating.

Admin wrote:[size=85][color=#000080]
....you would need to boost your hot water via the immersion heating.

Thanks, this is what I want to avoid/reduce, preferably w/o changing the tank since I do not really need more water-
Question is: Does the water get hotter with more panels?

no not usually the hot water tank has a capacity, and it will still in winter go cold over night, three panels or ten!!

>Question is: Does the water get hotter with more panels?

My findings of doing the reverse.

We found that our over egged system of 4 panels often gave scalding water at the height of summer. We therefore covered two during these months and the water temp is fine. During winter we open them up again and get hot water day and night.

Just giving your existing solar panels a good clean increases your hot water in winter months.Layers of dust render them less effective.

kazanddave wrote:Our solar panels are old and do not work well when its cold and cloudy etc, however my neighbours had new more efficient panels fitted last year and they are a lot better than the old ones.

Are these more efficient panels those with vacuum tubes?

Jeba.
The higher efficiency panels I have had installed are folded copper tubes painted black to absorb more heat. We very rarely have to use the immersion heater during the winter and this is usually because we have used all the hot water with baths and showers etc. Location Pegeia towards Coral Bay so are quite low near the sea.

Incidentally peoples.
After 14 years the iron fittings on the roof corroded, and the water pipe cracked and fell off the cylinder. Our reason for complete new system.