Passive Solar Buildings

Published on 19 Apr 2022. Written by Reddy Shekar

The increase in the worldwide population, demanding energy consumption extremely. This high consumption has a negative impact on the environment and energy conservation.

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To control these effects, green construction is adopting widely. The passive solar building is a concept comes under this green construction technology.

The buildings which use solar energy for its energy needs in different situations known as Passive solar buildings. In other words, Engineers design the building in such a way that to collect, store and use solar energy instead of electrical energy for different needs. Passive solar is different from general solar panels and solar thermal water heaters. It will not use any extra electrical or mechanical devices to move heat or light energy through the building. Instead, the building designed to collect, store and distribute energy naturally by itself.

Components of Passive solar buildings:

1. Collection
2. Storage
3. Distribution
4. Control

1.Collection:- There are three ways to capture or collect the sunlight are as follows, a)Direct gain, means sunlight is directly collected through one or more large east-facing windows. And later, it gets to move into the various parts of the building where energy is required. b)Indirect gain means sunlight is received by the window or wall that doesn’t directly move to the energy required area. Later, the energy is transferred into the required areas by conduction, convection, and radiation. The best example for the indirect gain is the Trombe wall. It is a wall constructed on the southern side of the building with a glass external layer. which is used to absorb Sun’s heat energy to warm the building during the winter.

2. Storage:- The purpose of the storage subsystem is to store the collected sunlight or energy until its needed by the occupants in the building. In most cases, the sunlight is collected in the daytime and used at night.

3. Distribution:- In passive solar buildings, the distribution of energy is done by conduction (heat flow between the solid materials), convection (heat flow through the movement of air) and radiation (where hot objects transfer heat by discharging infrared radiation).

4. Control:- In passive buildings, control is achieved through the use of shading devices or some other means to regulate the sunlight entry into the buildings.

Benefits: -

1. 1. Passive solar buildings are environmentally friendly structures.
2. 2. Economical and cheap in long run.
3. 3. The basic principles are simple to install and operate.
4. 4. Have a better lighting system compared to normal buildings.
5. 5. Suitable to any type of locations.
6. 6. Can be applied to both new and existing buildings.

Conclusion: With the help of a passive solar building concept, we can able to use solar energy to reduce the demand for high energy use. This concept also plays a major role in controlling various problems like global warming and carbon emission, etc..

Kit required to develop Passive Solar Buildings:

• Solar Energy

Technologies you will learn by working on Passive Solar Buildings:

• Solar passive
• Energy conservation
• Solar Panel

Any Questions?