Optimal Distribution of Heat Collecting Area of Two Collectors in Solar Water Heating Systems

Abstract In view of the large seasonal temperature difference, and the large temperature difference between day and night, difficulty in supplying domestic hot water supply in high altitude area, and the contradiction between low efficiency and cost of single type solar collector system, a hybrid heat collection system based on two different types of solar collectors has been considered in this paper, and a multi-objective optimization model for the heat collecting area optimization of the hybrid solar collectors has also established to solve the above problems. Besides, a fast and effective multi-objective optimization method was proposed for solving of this multi-objective optimization model. This method is based on the fast non-dominated genetic algorithm and the multi-objective decision-making analytic hierarchy process, and was used to analyze the practical hot water supply in a farm in Guoluo zone. The research results shown that this proposed optimization algorithm can quickly and effectively complete the heat collecting area distribution of two different types of collectors in the combined heat collecting system given a certain weight of system cost and heat collecting area. Under the premise of guaranteeing sufficient hot water supply, the system cost is significantly reduced. Therefore, the problem of difficulty and high cost of hot water supply in the plateau region is solved, which has a good practical significance.