Design and construction of solar- electricity hybrid energy system for a water boiler.

Abstract

Water boiling is the second largest energy user at domestic level and hotels accounting for about 26% of the total energy Costs. The study On electricity consumption at hotel Africana, one of the typical Large hotel in Uganda revealed -that about 27% of the total energy are consumed by water heaters. The purpose of this project was to design and. construct a solar-electricity hybrid energy system for powering a continuous flow water boiler for households and restaurants. This would reduce the cost spent on the grid electricity in boiling water by first preheating the water using the free Solar energy and providing a clean energy for water boiling so as to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and particulate matter into the environment- 1n Order to achieve the above purpose, data on solar energy and solar energy technologies for heating water were Collected, the use of electrical energy for water boiling was also analysed, different construction techniques such as welding, grinding, cutting and so on were adopted, and the system's performance tested for a period of five days at a volume flow rate of 31.251ttres/ hour. The objectives of the study were achieved -with the efficiency of the solar and electricity energy systems being 34.1% and The economic evaluation showed that' the system has a cheaper operation cost Over a period of 5 years) as compared to the electrical water heaters (22,071,000 Ushs. Over a period of 5 years) hence, an ideal power solution for businesses that uses a lot of energy for water boiling such as restaurants and households. The implementation of the system would therefore reduce the consumption of electric energy from the grid and reduce environmental pollution.