A Broad Comparison of Solar Photovoltaic and Thermal Technologies for Industrial Heating Applications

Solar harvesting designs aim to optimize energy output per unit area. When it comes to choosing between rooftop technologies for generating heat and/or electricity from the sun, though, the literature has favored qualitative arguments over quantitative comparisons. In this paper, an agnostic perspective will be used to evaluate several solar collector designs—thermal, photovoltaic (PV), and hybrid (PV/T) systems—which can result in medium temperature heat for industry rooftops. Using annual trnsys simulations in several characteristic global locations, it was found that a maximum solar contribution (for all selected locations) of 79.1% can be achieved for a sterilization process with a solar thermal (ST) system as compared to 40.6% for a PV system. A 43.2%solar contribution can be obtained with a thermally coupled PV/T, while an uncoupled PV/T beam splitting collector can achieve 84.2%. Lastly, PV and ST were compared in a side-by-side configuration, indicating that this scenario is also feasible since it provides a solar contribution of 75.2%. It was found that the location's direct normal incident (DNI) and global horizontal irradiation (GHI) are the dominant factors in determining the best technology for industrial heating applications. Overall, this paper is significant in that it introduces a comparative simulation strategy to analyze a wide variety of solar technologies for global industrial heat applications.