Sistemas de aquecimento de água que utilizam a conversão de energia solar em energia térmica, além de serem um meio fácil e limpo de geração de energia, trazem benefícios econômicos ao país e principalmente a quem os utiliza. O elemento principal destes sistemas, o coletor solar, é objeto de estudo neste trabalho. Coletores planos são amplamente utilizados e possuem uma tecnologia consolidada, porém, um tipo de coletor composto por tubos de vidro, com isolamento a vácuo e superfície absorvedora seletiva vem se tornando uma opção cada vez mais viável economicamente. Com benefícios evidentes em climas de frio mais intenso, estes coletores devem ter seus parâmetros de desempenho térmico determinados segundo procedimentos normativos, para que possam ser dimensionados de forma correta os sistemas de aquecimento que os utilizarem. Este trabalho descreve o desenvolvimento de uma bancada de ensaios construída no Laboratório de Energia Solar da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, que tem o intuito de possibilitar o ensaio deste tipo de coletor. Esta bancada contou com uma instrumentação cuidadosamente calibrada e com um dispositivo, desenvolvido neste trabalho, capaz de realizar medidas da diferença de temperatura da água entre as seções de entrada e saída do coletor com uma incerteza inferior a 0,05 °C. Foram realizados ensaios individuais de dois tubos a vácuo de superfícies absorvedoras distintas desacoplados do coletor. Um ensaio determinou seu coeficiente de transferência de calor e outro avaliou as propriedades ópticas de cada tubo. A metodologia experimental utilizada se mostrou válida e possível de determinar alguns parâmetros para utilização em simulações. Um melhor desempenho do tubo com superfície seletiva de (Al-N/SS/Cu) em relação ao que utiliza (Al-N/Al) ficou evidente nestes ensaios. Foi realizado na bancada desenvolvida o ensaio de um coletor de tubos de vidro a vácuo que utiliza o principio de transferência direta. Sua curva de eficiência e seus parâmetros de desempenho foram determinados sob condições de regime permanente. Houve pequena diferença entre os valores obtidos e os fornecidos pelo fabricante, o que deve ter ocorrido, em parte, devido à diferença das condições de realização dos ensaios. A curva de desempenho obtida neste trabalho para o coletor de tubos de vidro a vácuo foi comparada às curvas de dois coletores planos. Nesta comparação ficou evidente que o coletor ensaiado é mais eficiente em situações onde a diferença entre a temperatura da água no interior do coletor e temperatura ambiente são maiores. / The use of solar systems for heating water brings economic benefits to the country and especially to the users. Furthermore, it is an easy and clean form of energy generation. The solar collector, the main element of such systems, is the object of the present study. Flat plane collectors are widely used and have a consolidated technology. However, the market share of tubular evacuated glass collectors is rapidly increasing. These collectors are constituted by elements consisting in two concentrical tubes with vacuum in between. Instead of using a black painted sheet of metal as the absorbing element, the internal glass tube is coated with a selective surface. The vacuum provides a high level insulation, with evident benefits in severe cold climates. In order to allow a correct sizing of systems employing such collectors, their thermal performance parameters must be determined according to standard procedures. This work show the description of a test system, built at Laboratório de Energia Solar of Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul, which enable the testing of this type of collector. This test system features a carefully calibrated instrumentation and a device, developed in this work, for measuring the water temperature difference between the collector inlet and outlet with an accuracy of 0.05 °C. A test for estimating the thermal losses and the optical properties of two evacuated tubes with different selective surfaces (Al-N/SS/Cu e Al-N/Al) was also performed. The better performance of the tube with the selective surface deposited on a copper layer was. The experimental methodology was proven to be valid and useful for determining some parameters used in simulations. A test based on the current Brazilian standard with a solar collector with twenty water-in-glass vacuum tubes was performed. Its efficiency curve and its performance parameters were determined under steady state conditions. Some differences between the obtained values and manufacturer data were detected, probably due to the difference between the test conditions. The efficiency curve obtained for the tubular solar collector was compared to the curves of two flat plane collectors. This comparison indicated that the tested collector is more efficient under situations in which the difference between the temperature of the water inside the collector and the ambient temperature are higher.

Modern Garbage Collectors provide performance improvements by increasing program locality to utilize the faster CPU cache. A common approach is to move objects together according to the mutators’ access order, which brings more relocations during GC. In most cases, more relocations would not impact performance when using concurrent Garbage Collectors such as ZGC. However, in constrained environments with fewer CPU cores or less memory, bad relocation performance will cause overall performance degradation. In this thesis, we investigated why larger objects do not benefit from better program locality, then proposed a new design to reduce the number of relocations by efficiently identifying and ignoring larger objects. As a result, the relocation performance can be improved. In constrained environments, this can lead to an increase in overall throughput. In the new design, we introduce an extra page type, the tiny page. If an object is considerably small that it could benefit from relocation, it will be placed on the tiny page when allocating. As a result, we could replace the time‐consuming size check of objects with a faster page type check. Memory fragmentation also can be reduced by this design. To evaluate this design, we add the size identification procedure into a locality improvement implementation named HCSGC. The results of benchmarks show a slight improvement in constrained environments. In the JGraphT benchmark, we see a 3‐5% speedup in different configurations with memory limitations. In the SPECjbb2015 benchmark, we see a ~1% increase in performance on average, but with overlapping confidence intervals. In the DaCapo benchmark suite, we see a 1% improvement in the sunflow benchmark with CPU constraint. For other benchmarks in DaCapo, no significant difference is discovered. The results suggest that the proposed new design is a feasible way of filtering out larger objects, and doing so can further improve the relocation and overall performance. / Modern Garbage Collector ger prestandaförbättringar genom att öka programplatsen för att använda den snabbare CPU‐cachen. En vanlig metod är att flytta fler objekt baserat på mutators åtkomstorder. I de flesta fall skulle fler omplaceringar inte påverka prestanda vid användning av samtidiga Garbage Collector som ZGC. Men i begränsade miljöer med färre CPU‐kärnor eller mindre minne kommer dålig flyttningsprestanda att leda till övergripande prestandaförsämring. I denna avhandling undersökte vi varför större objekt inte gynnas av bättre programplats, och föreslog sedan en ny design för att minska antalet flyttningar genom att effektivt identifiera och ignorera större objekt. Som ett resultat kan flyttningsprestandan förbättras. I begränsade miljöer kan detta leda till en ökning av den totala genomströmningen. I den nya designen introducerade vi en extra sidtyp, den lilla sidan. Om ett objekt är avsevärt litet som kan ha nytta av omplacering, kommer det att placeras på den lilla sidan vid allokeringen. Som ett resultat kan vi ersätta den tidskrävande storlekskontrollen av objekt med en snabbare sidtypskontroll. Minnesfragmentering kan också reduceras med denna design. För att utvärdera denna design lägger vi till storleksidentifieringsproceduren i en implementering av lokaliseringsförbättring som heter HCSGC. Resultaten av riktmärken visar en liten förbättring i begränsade miljöer. I JGraphT‐riktmärket ser vi en hastighet på 3‐ 5% i olika konfigurationer med minnesbegränsningar. I riktmärket SPECjbb2015 ser vi i genomsnitt en ~1% prestationsökning, men med överlappande konfidensintervall. I DaCapo ‐riktmärket ser vi en förbättring på 1% i solflödesriktmärket med CPU‐begränsning. För andra riktmärken i DaCapo upptäcks ingen signifikant skillnad. Resultaten tyder på att den föreslagna nya designen är ett genomförbart sätt att filtrera bort större objekt, och det kan ytterligare förbättra flytten och den övergripande prestandan.

Pointers in 64-bit architectures are unlikely to exhaust their vast address range, and are as such needlessly big. Reducing the amount of memory a pointer occupies leads to reduced memory demands, better usage of memory, and better locality. Pointer compression is a term that encompasses techniques that aim to make pointers occupy less memory, often to 32-bit for the sake of word alignment. Pointers that are 32-bit embody the opposite problem of having too restricted of an address range, being able to address only 4 GB. Z is a garbage collector in the HotSpot JVM which does not support pointer compression. Partly because the aforementioned address range restriction, and partly because the implementation of compressed pointers which exist in HotSpot would clash with the goals of the garbage collector. This project explores ways of implementing pointer compression for Z that isn't detrimental to the goals of the garbage collector, and aims to find where problems may occur. The outset was to explore compressing speculatively during runtime. The result is a design that relies on a custom bit layout for compressed pointers, inspecting bit layouts of the pointers on each read and write to detect the compression status. This seems to be the most promising in terms of code maintainability and ease of implementation.

In this research, the impact of solar thermal water heaters on the electric water heating load curve in a residential distribution circuit is analyzed with realistic hot water draw profiles. For this purpose, the electric and solar thermal water heater models are developed in MATLAB and validated with results from GridLAB-D and TRNSYS respectively. The solar thermal water heater model is developed for two types of collectors namely the flat plate and evacuated glass tube collector. Simulations are performed with the climate data from two cities - Madison, WI and Tampa, FL - which belong to two very different climate zones in the United States. Minute-by-minute electric energy consumptions in all three configurations of water heaters are modeled for a single water heater as well as a residential distribution circuit with 100 water heaters for daily as well as monthly time frames. The research findings include: The electric energy saving potential of a solar thermal water heater powered by auxiliary electric element is in the range of 40-80% as compared to an all-electric water heater depending on the site conditions such as ambient temperature, sunshine and wind speed. The simulation results indicate that the energy saving potential of a solar thermal water heater is in the range of 40-70% during winter and 60-80% during summer. Solar thermal water heaters aid in reducing the peak demand for electric water heating in a distribution feeder during sunshine hours when ambient temperatures are higher. The simulation results indicate that the peak reduction potential of solar thermal water heaters in a residential distribution feeder is in the range of 25-40% during winter and 40-60% during summer. The evacuated glass tube collectors save an additional 7-10% electric energy compared to the flat plate collectors with one glass pane during winter and around 10-15% during summer. The additional savings result from the capability of glass tube collectors to absorb ground reflected radiation and diffuse as well as direct beam radiation for a wider range of incidence angles. Also, the evacuated glass tube structure helps in reducing wind convective losses. From the simulations performed for Madison, WI and Tampa, FL, it is observed that Tampa, FL experiences more energy savings in winter than Madison, WI, while the energy savings are almost the same in summer. This is due to the fact that Tampa, FL has warmer winters with higher ambient temperatures and longer sunshine hours during the day compared to Madison, WI while the summer temperatures and sunshine hours are almost the same for the two cities. As expected, the simulation results prove the fact that lowering the hot water temperature set point will result in the reduction of electricity consumption. For a temperature reduction from 120 deg. F to 110 deg. F, electric water heaters save about 25-35% electric energy whereas solar thermal water heaters save about 30-40% auxiliary electric energy for the same temperature reduction. For the flat plate collectors, glass panes play an important role in auxiliary electric energy consumption. Flat plate collectors with two glass panes save about 10-15% auxiliary electric energy compared to those with no glass panes and about 3-5% energy saving compared to collectors with one glass pane. This is because there are reduced wind convective losses with glass panes. However, there are also transmittance losses from glass panes and there are upper limits on how many glass panes can be used. Results and findings from this research provide valuable insight into the benefits of solar thermal water heaters in a residential distribution feeder, which include the energy savings and peak demand reduction. / Master of Science

The annual gain of stationary solar thermal collectors can be increased by non-focusing reflectors. Such concentrators make use of diffuse irradiance. A collector’s incidence angle modifier for diffuse (diffuse-IAM) accounts for this utilization. The diffuse irra-diance varies over the collector hemisphere, which dynamically influences the diffuse-IAM. This is not considered by state-of-the-art collector models. They simply calculate with one constant IAM value for isotropic diffuse irradiance from sky and ground. This work is based on the development of a stationary, double-covered process heat flat-plate collector with a one-sided, segmented booster reflector (RefleC). This reflector approximates one branch of a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC). Optical meas-urement results of the collector components as well as raytracing results of different variants are given. The thermal and optical characterization of test samples up to 190 °C in an outdoor laboratory as well as the validation of the raytracing are discussed. A collector simulation model with varying diffuse-IAM is described. Therein, ground reflected and sky diffuse irradiance are treated separately. Sky diffuse is weighted with an anisotropic IAM, which is re-calculated in every time step. This is realized by gener-ating an anisotropic sky radiance distribution with the model of Brunger and Hooper, and by weighting the irradiance from distinct sky elements with their raytraced beam-IAM values. According to the simulations, the RefleC booster increases the annual out-put of the double-covered flat-plate in Würzburg, Germany, by 87 % at a constant inlet temperature of 120 °C and by 20 % at 40 °C. Variations of the sky diffuse-IAM of up to 25 % during one day are found. A constant, isotropic diffuse-IAM would have under-valued the gains from the booster by 40 % at 40 °C and by 20 % at 120 °C. The results indicate that the gain of all non-focusing solar collectors is undervalued when constant, isotropic diffuse-IAMs calculated from raytracing or steady-state test data are used. Process heat generation with RefleC is demonstrated in a monitored pilot plant at work-ing temperatures of up to 130 °C. The measured annual system utilization ratio is 35 %. Comparing the gains at all inlet temperatures above 80 °C, the booster increases the an-nual output of the double-covered flat-plates by 78 %. Taking all inlet temperatures, the total annual gains of RefleC are 39 % above that of the flat-plates without reflectors. A qualitative comparison of the new simulation model results to the laboratory results and monitoring data shows good agreement. It is shown that the accuracy of existing collector models can be increased with low effort by calculating separate isotropic IAMs for diffuse sky and ground reflected irradiance. The highest relevance of this work is seen for stationary collectors with very distinctive radiation acceptance.

In Sweden, the residential and industrial energy demand is provided by a significant part of district heating. In a decarbonization plan to reduce the CO2 emissions, the integration of a large-scale solar system in the district heating can be a suitable option. The most used types of collectors are flat plate collectors (FPC), for which efficiency drops at high temperature levels. Parabolic through collectors (PTC) have seen increased interest in later years, due to their higher efficiency at higher temperature levels, which could improve system performance both energetically and economically. A hybrid concept using a combination of FPC and PTC for a solar thermal system has previously been studied for a solar district heating system in Denmark, with the aim to maximize the solar production by operating the solar collectors in the temperature ranges where they excel. The first aim of this thesis was to adapt the hybrid solar system in a district heating system for a Swedish case study and to evaluate if the hybrid optimization studied has similar positive effects in the overall thermal production of the system in Sweden, as it did in Denmark. The second aim of this thesis was to investigate the use of photovoltaic thermal collectors (PVT) instead of FPC for parts of the solar thermal system. With PVT, a single solar collector module allows for simultaneous production of heat and electricity and integration of photovoltaic thermal collectors in the solar assisted district heating could improve the overall performance of the system, both in terms of energy production and economical gain.The study was performed using the simulation tool TRNSYS based on a model developed in a danish case study. It was performed a parametric analysis on the percentage of share of the different types of solar collectors in the total area. The results given from the simulations have been used to carry out an economic evaluation based on the levelized cost of substituted energy, the annual operation and maintenance costs, and the marginal operational cost difference between a conventional district heating system supplied by a boiler only and a solar assisted district heating system. Based on the results found, it has been proved that a greater proportion of parabolic trough collectors in the solar field contribute to a greater production of thermal energy but also to higher expenses in the economy of the project. The best configuration which balanced these two factors was composed by 70 % of flat plate collectors and 30 % of parabolic trough collectors, based on the total area. The integration of photovoltaic thermal has been demonstrated to be not cost-effective for the studied location compared to the optimized ratio of FPC to PTC, mainly due to the high and uncertain price of the new technology. The use of photovoltaic thermal system is not yet widely developed in projects and there are only a few existing projects in operation today. In the future, the development of photovoltaic thermal in solar assisted district heating projects might have a higher realizable economic potential due to the industry learning curve, but more studies will need to be performed on this.

Master of Science / Department of Architectural Engineering and Construction Science / Fred L. Hasler / On-site energy production is becoming increasingly prevalent in building systems design with a renewed public awareness of sustainability, decreased energy resources, and an increase in the requirements of local and federal energy codes. Systems such as photovoltaics and solar thermal collectors have been implemented in designs to meet these challenges. The emerging technology of hybrid photovoltaic thermal (PVT) offers the potential to combine these systems into one contained module. A hybrid PVT system can simultaneously produce thermal and electrical energy, maximizing the use of available surface area available for energy production. Hybrid PVT can be implemented using PVT air collectors, PVT liquid collectors, and ventilated PV facades. Hybrid PVT is gaining interest at the academic level and is being applied at the residential level. Several commercial hybrid PVT products are currently manufactured, but options are limited. This report will evaluate PV, solar thermal collector, and hybrid PVT technologies, discuss the various components required for these systems, and present advantages and disadvantages of these systems. For an example elementary school design, the report will compare monthly energy production of the various systems, evaluating their ability to supply the peak loads of an example building design. Estimated first costs and operating and maintenance costs will be evaluated. The report will also quantify the ideal balance of PV and solar thermal collectors for the example based on loads and simple payback. Conclusions will be made about the current state of hybrid PVT and what steps need to be taken for it to be effectively implemented in the commercial building market.

Master of Science / Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering / Danny H. Rogers / Center pivot irrigation systems are used in crop production across the state of Kansas. The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) standard on uniformity testing of a center pivot system calls for collectors to be used to measure the water depth emitted by the irrigation system. The standard was designed without specially considering the low pressure sprinklers now commonly used on center pivot systems; the recommended collectors may not accurately measure the applied depth from these sprinklers. The collector size effect on measured water depth and measured depth variability was studied for spinning plate, fixed plate, and wobbling plate sprinkler systems. Five different collector sizes (C2 (5.5 cm), C4 (10.0 cm), C6 (14.8 cm), C8 (20.0 cm), and C10 (27.4 cm)) were studied using four 5x5 Latin squares. Each collector’s water depth was measured and statistically analyzed. Two analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests of the collector size effect were reported. Past experimental results were compared to this experiment’s results. The ANOVA for the measured water depth reported no collector size effect for the spinning plate and wobbling plate systems. The ANOVA of the variability of measured depths showed significant differences between collector sizes for the spinning plate system but not for the wobbling plate system. Previous studies of spinning plate and wobbling plate systems reported acceptable variability for all collector sizes. Although some collector sizes measured significantly different mean depths, the numerical difference in mean depths was small. Any studied collector size could be used to measure the water depth of wobbling plate systems, but the C4 collector is ideal. C4 and C6 collectors are ideal for measuring spinning plate systems. Significant differences between measured depths were reported for the fixed plate system. The C10 measured significantly lower water depths than all other collectors, and the C4 collector measured lower depths than the C2 and C8 collectors. The variability of mean depths was similar and high for all collector sizes. Previous experiments also indicated that different collector sizes measured different depths and had high variability of depth measurements for the fixed plate sprinkler systems. The distinct stream pattern provides a challenge for accurately measuring the water depth with these collector sizes; other methods of measuring uniformity should be considered for fixed plate sprinklers.

Finding cleaner and sustainable energy resources is one of the most important concerns for the development of humanity. Solar energy is taking an essential role in this matter as the production cost of solar collectors is decreasing and more solar installations are being set up every year throughout the world. One way of reducing the cost of solar panels is by using concentrators that are cheaper than the costly photovoltaic cells and can increase their output. Solarus AB designed a Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) hybrid collector that uses this principle and which is a variation of the Maximum Reflector Collector (MaReCo) design and is a Compound Parabolic Collector (CPC). This thesis has two main objectives. The first one is to design variations of the actual Solarus’ design and some alternative MaReCo designs and pure parabola designs. These designs include new solar cell cuts which are based on 4 busbar solar cells. In this way a future in-depth analysis may be carried out by comparing different receiver designs and collector boxes. The second goal is to investigate the current electrical and thermal performance of the collectors from Solarus AB which are installed in the Hus 45 of HiG. The appropriate data of the installation has been obtained using simulations and specific software, and it has been analysed with Microsoft Excel®. Concerning the new designs of the receivers and boxes, everything has been prepared for the future construction of the prototypes. All the measurements and their adjustments have been taken into account to define the size of the components and the process of building has been set up. Moreover, some future work has been planned in order to move forward the project. Regarding the analysis of the HiG installation, both electrical and thermal performance have resulted to be significantly lower compared with their estimated simulation, being their real output around 60 % of the estimated one. In the thermal part, the losses in the pipeline result to be more than a third part of the produced heat. In the electrical part, the production varies a lot between different collectors due to some of them do not work properly, consequence of poor condition of the solar panels (broken cells, dirt, shading, etc.).

<p>U radu je izvr&scaron;ena detaljna analiza uticajnih faktora na energetsku efikasnost prijemnika sunčeve energije u dinamičkim uslovima rada. Identifikovani su parametri koji utiču na povećanje efikasnosti reprezentativnih tipova prijemnika koji se nalaze u komercijalnoj primeni. Promenom geometrijskih parametara konstrukcije i radnih parametara utvrđen je njihov uticaj na energetsku efikasnost a zatim je kreiran model za ocenu povećanja efikasnosti prijemnika sunčeve energije u dinamičkim uslovima rada.</p>