An Analytical Investigation of Solar Water Heater Performance During Winter Period in Jharkhand Region

Present work reports the performance analysis of flat plate solar water heater during the winter season in Jharkhand region. The objective of the present work is to evaluate the performance of a flat plate solar water heater during winter where duration of daylight and solar intensity are very small. Sunray tracking method has been used to calculate the incident solar intensity on a stationary flat plate collector and thermal resistance concept has been used to calculate heat transfer loss from the flat plate collector. The coupled nonlinear equations are solved using optimization technique. It can be seen that sufficient amount of thermal energy can be extracted from the rooftop water heater during these seasons.