Exploration of a new distributed solar heating system with “integrated source-sink”

Centralized solar heating systems require large amounts of land to install collector arrays, limiting their application in areas where land resources are scarce. Solar heating systems for single buildings can make effective use of the building roof for heat collection, but their heating stability is relatively poor. A new distributed solar heating system with “integrated source-sink” is presented in response to the limitations of existing solar heating systems. This paper presents the principle of the distributed solar heating system with “integrated source-sink”, qualitatively analyses the differences between the system and traditional systems, and discusses the key issues to be solved in terms of the heat-user nodes, the network forms and the heat storage design.