7 Reasons to consider Roof Top Solar Thermal than Solar PV | Part (6/8)

This post is part of a series of blog posts that deal with feasibility of solar thermal system over a solar PV module.

Find the link to the previous post here.

An another reason why solar thermal modules are preferred is because of the losses that incur during the generation and transmission of electricity using solar PV.

Only a portion of the sun\’s radiation that falls on the solar PV module is converted to electricity, this in-turn undergoes transmission losses due its transportation through the grid.

 

This conversion also includes electrical heaters which have a heating efficiency of 90 percent.

A brief summary of the loss that occur is depicted.

Summing up, on average a solar PV module converts around only 10 percent of the incident initial radiation to final heating.

 

Solar Thermal modules avoid this problem since it directly converts the solar radiation to heat thorough the use of working fluids at high efficiency (around 70 %).