Modeling of a hybrid domestic solar/electric water heater for hardware implementation

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical model of a domestic hybrid solar-electric water heater. Thermal equations describing the behavior of the system are conducted in order to be used in Demand Side Management problems. The main focus is on the establishment of an accurate yet simple model that can be implemented on hardware without requiring a long computation time and great memory resources. Real hot water consumption profiles and weather conditions are applied. A particular attention is paid to the impact of the assumption of a constant ambient temperature on the model's behavior. Finally, a hardware in the loop implementation on National Instruments' Compact RIO is done.