ABSTRACT
Commercial, large residential and industrial buildings may use active solar technologies for ventilation air preheating, solar process heating and solar cooling. Solar power is a good match for cooling/air-conditioning, because the heat is available when most needed, but commercial deployment is at an early stage. Space cooling uses thermally activated cooling systems driven (or partially driven) by solar energy. The two systems are: closed cycle; and open cycle. The goal of the solar design considerations is to minimise the use of fossil fuels required for backup power of the chiller. This means minimising the load with passive solar techniques, using a large enough solar collector area for the load and integrating a large enough heat dump. The performance of a thermally driven chiller is described by the thermal coefficient of performance (COP).
