Customer Reviews

Planning and Installing Solar Thermal Systems: A Guide for Installers, Architects and Engineers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a designer or installer of Solar Hot Water and Heating-

Buy this book. I know its expensive, but it is worth it!

Nothing I have seen from the US is even close.

One small draw back is that you will have to convert from metric.

I bought this book immediately after was published. It's a great reference book and very good introduction to solar heating systems. What I liked the most is how the book is set up. It gives you brief overview what the solar energy is, hot it works, and it explains difference between solar panels, what efficiency and solar fraction of solar panels is. And not only that... it tells you about system components, how to design residential systems, large scale systems and way more. As a technical manager for large thermal solar company I always recommend this book to my new team mates.

I am an engineer and recently I had to look into designing big solar thermal systems. I agree with a previous reviewer that nothing from the US comes even close to the usefulness of the information included in this book.
The book seems to be a compilation of different materials, mostly german. I also owe the "Grosse Solaranlagen" (Big solar systems) book published by SolarPraxis in Germany:

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Initially I thought that the information is redundant because the diagrams and pictures look the same in both books. Reading both I realized that this book reproduces only a part of the german book. Unfortunately it does not go into the specifics of actually sizing the system (flows, circulation pumps, pressures, solar stores). For me without that info, it is of limited use.

The book is good as an introduction to different schemes and on how to approach the problem, but it cannot be used to actually size a system.

I recommend the SolarPraxis german books if you can read them.

This is a very good book for the right reader ... unfortunately you need to be familiar and able to use the SI system.

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It goes from simple to complex and domestic to commercial scale with calculations and illustrations. However, the concepts of design and consumption are more suited to the frugal European rather than the average middle class American (no insult intended but American energy consumption is about twice that of a European). Smaller houses, smaller more efficient appliances etc.