* Solar Heater
To profit solar availability in this region a hot water pipe solar system was purc
hased at the local market. This system provides hot water of at least 52 celsius degrees to the house. In sunny days this is enough to provide heated water to the complete house (including the yacuzzi). In cloudy days the electrical resistance heater is automatically used.Remote and online tank temperature monitoring can be observed in the following link: tank temperature. And power consumption of the resistance backup heater in this link: heater power consumption
This system is an Interma ITM-CPCS-58-1.8-30. It heats 300 liters tank using 30 vacuum tubes. It has a 1,000 watts electrical resistance backup heater, and includes a system controller: Intelligent Controller for Solar Water Heater TK-7Y. The total price was $ 1,950.00.
The system controller allows to control water temperature. In this case, it is programmed to have water at 55 Celsius degrees at 6:00 hours am. When the temperature drops below this level the resistance backup heater is turned on automatically. During a sunny day the temperature can reach 65 celsius degrees.
In regards to the tank temperature monitoring and power consumption this system was integrated with an arduino circuit, that allows to store this data a cloud server. This integration is described in Energy monitoring Solar Heater.
In order to read the temperature, the Arduino circuit is coupled with the system controller using a operational amplifier MCP601. Temperature signals are taken from the sensor (DS18B20) placed in the system controller.
