At Stuttgart University, a solar heating system for an office building with laboratories and lecture rooms was installed in 1985. It consists of 211 m2 of unglazed solar collectors, a 1050 m3 water-flooded pebble bed heat store, and a heat pump. Heat can be supplied to the store from the solar collectors or from a power station (as waste heat). The whole system has worked successfully for five years under varied strategies. In the first two heating periods, the heating strategy was aimed to collect as much solar energy as possible. Thus, about 60 percent of the heat demand could be covered by solar energy; but the yearly heat pump coefficient of performance (COP) was only around 2.76. With an improved heat pump, a monthly COP of 3.6 was obtained. Heat losses from the storage amounted to about 20 percent.
Preliminary design package for prototype solar heating system
