Solar Water Heating in Dragash Municipality, Kosovo

Sammanfattning: Water has been heated with the sun has almost as long as there have been humans, but itis not until recently that more advanced and effective solar water heating systems havebecome common, and they are still gaining ground. Through the years new systems andnew solar collectors have been developed. In Kosovo, however, not much attention hasbeen paid to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources and solar water heatingsystems is a new concept.The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kosovo is working on a projecton sustainable development in Dragash Municipality in southern Kosovo. A solar waterheating system has recently been installed at the hospital in Dragash, as part of the UNDPproject. The system is a pilot project, to see how well solar energy can be used in thisarea.The existing solar water heating system at the hospital in Dragash was examined andevaluated. The possibilities of using the fundamental principle of the solar water heatingsystem at the hospital on residential houses in Dragash were looked into. Six prototypesof average residential houses in the village of Brod and Dragash Town were created. Thesolar collector size and storage needed to meet the demands for the six house prototypeswere calculated. Information on the incoming solar irradiation for each hour of a year wasobtained from the online service SoDa Solar Radiation Data. The total annual incomingsolar radiation for one square meter was calculated.The environmental, social and economic effects of solar water heating in Dragash wereconsidered and discussed. Rough economic calculations were made on the effects ofinstallation of solar water heating systems.The solar water heating system at the hospital in Dragash is a good pilot project, and islikely to work satisfyingly. The annual output effect of the system is approximately 7 400kWh. The fundamental principle needs to be altered to work on residential houses. Thesolar collector needs to be of a cheaper kind, and the collector and storage tank can be ofsmaller dimensions.Solar water heating can contribute to Kosovo’s work toward sustainable environmental,social and economic development focusing on hot water supply. Kosovo has sufficientsolar radiation for solar water heating systems to work in a satisfactory way. The outputeffect for a solar water heating system in Dragash is around 390 kWh/(m2∙year) with atotal efficiency for the system of 30%. If the solar water heating system replaces heatingby electricity the annual savings can be 31 €/m2 solar collector. The biggest obstacles forthe use of solar energy are the public’s lack of knowledge on solar water heating andenvironmental problems connected to energy, as well as economy.The work done in this thesis is a good foundation for future research on solar energy inKosovo. It can be extended and elaborated with more thorough economic calculations,since economy is an important factor in the future for solar energy. Only roughcalculations were made in this thesis, since it has a technical approach. More extensiveresearch could also be done to evaluate the possibilities of using solar water heating forspace heating.