Solar water heating
use of sunlight for water heating with a solar thermal collector
Solar water heating (SWH) is heating water by sunlight, using a solar thermal collector. A variety of configurations are available at varying cost to provide solutions in different climates and latitudes. SWHs are widely used for residential and some industrial applications.
A Sun-facing collector heats a working fluid that passes into a storage system for later use. SWH are active (pumped) and passive (convection-driven). They use water only, or both water and a working fluid. They are heated directly or via light-concentrating mirrors. They operate independently or as hybrids with electric or gas heaters. In large-scale installations, mirrors may concentrate sunlight into a smaller collector.
At the end of 2023, global solar hot water thermal capacity was 560 GWth, a 3% increase from 2022.
The public source identifies “Solar water heating” as use of sunlight for water heating with a solar thermal collector. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Solar, water and heating.
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This entry incorporates text from “Solar water heating” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.