Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild

Solar integrated energy system for a green building

X.Q. Zhai, R.Z. Wang *, Y.J. Dai, J.Y. Wu, Y.X. Xu, Q. Ma
Institute of Refrigeration & Cryogenics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Received 29 June 2006; received in revised form 20 November 2006; accepted 26 November 2006

Abstract
Shanghai is characteristic of subtropical monsoonal climate with the mean annual temperature of 17.6 8C, and receives annual total radiation
above 4470 MJ/m2 with approximately 2000 h of sunshine. A solar energy system capable of heating, cooling, natural ventilation and hot water
supply has been built in Shanghai Research Institute of Building Science. The system mainly contains 150 m2 solar collector arrays, two adsorption
chillers, floor radiation heating pipes, finned tube heat exchangers and a hot water storage tank of 2.5 m3 in volume. It is used for heating in winter,
cooling in summer, natural ventilation in spring and autumn, hot water supply in all the year for 460 m2 building area. The whole system is
controlled by an industrial control computer and operates automatically. Under typical weather condition of Shanghai, it is found that the average
heating capacity is up to 25.04 kW in winter, the average refrigerating output reaches 15.31 kW in summer and the solar-enhanced natural
ventilation air flow rate doubles in transitional seasons. The experimental investigation validated the practical effective operation of the adsorption
cooling-based air-conditioning system. After 1-year operation, it is confirmed that the solar system contributes 70% total energy of the involved
space for the weather conditions of Shanghai.
# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Solar energy; Heating; Air-conditioning; Natural ventilation; Green building

1. Introduction
The modern comfort living conditions are achieved at the
cost of vast energy resources. Global warming and ozone
depletion and the escalating costs of fossil fuels over the last
few yeas, have forced governments and engineers to re-examine
the whole approach to the design and control of building energy
system [1]. Consequently, it is of great importance in the
building field to reconsider the building structure and exploit
renewable energy systems, which can minimize the energy
expenditure and improve thermal comfort. Solar energy is
abundant and clean; it is meaningful to substitute solar energy
for conventional energy. Solar energy therefore has an
important role to play in the building energy system.
The ways solar systems are used in newer buildings usually
combine several solar-related technologies. They may be both
solar heated/cooled, and solar PV powered, i.e. they are simply
solar buildings [2]. Recently, solar water collectors have
undergone a rapid development; they are installed with the
main purpose of preheating domestic hot water and/or to cover

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 62933250; fax: +86 21 62933250.

E-mail address: rzwang@mail.sjtu.edu.cn (R.Z. Wang).
0378-7788/$ see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2006.11.010

a fraction of the space heating demand. However, this

application mainly for obtaining hot water through solar
energy is not very consistent with the order of nature. In winter,
it is convenient to combine hot water system with space heating
system just through increasing the collector area. Whereas, for
summer with high solar radiant intensity and high ambient air
temperature, the demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration
is in preference to hot water, this phenomenon is obvious
especially in the south of China for example. The prevalence of
air-conditioners has brought great pressure upon energy,
electricity and environment. Consequently, solar-powered
air-conditioning system would be a perfect scheme because
it not only makes the best use of solar energy, but also converts
low-grade energy (solar energy) into high-grade energy for
comfort. In addition, it is meaningful for the energy
conservation and environment protection. Solar cooling has
been shown to be technically feasible. It is particularly an
attractive application for solar energy, because of the near
coincidence of peak cooling loads with the available solar
power. The future development trend is building integration
with solar energy systems.
Solar cooling systems can be classified into three categories:
namely, solar sorption cooling, solar-related systems and solarmechanical systems, thereinto, the former two systems are

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Nomenclature
COP
I
T

coefficient of performance
solar radiant intensity (W/m2)
temperature (8C)

Greek symbol
h
instantaneous efficiency of solar collector arrays
Subscripts
a
ambient
chill
chilled water
co
cooling water
hp
heat pipe evacuated tubular solar collector array
hw
hot water
in
inlet
o
outlet
U
U-type evacuated tubular solar collector array

based upon solar thermal utilization and the latter one utilizes a
solar-powered prime mover to drive a conventional airconditioning system. The solar-powered prime mover can be
either a Rankine engine or an electric motor based on solar
photovoltaic principle. It is reported that the photovoltaic
panels have a low field efficiency of about 1015%, depending
on the type of cells used, which result in low overall efficiencies
for the system [3]. Besides, at otherwise identical refrigerating
output, the solar-mechanical systems are 45 times more
expensive than those powered by solar thermal utilization [4].
Therefore, the majority of solar-powered air-conditioning
systems at present are solar sorption and solar-related systems
based on solar thermal utilization. In most of the solar cooling
systems, hot water driven single-stage lithium bromide
absorption chillers were commonly used. Evacuated tubes or
other high-grade solar collectors were adopted to provide a hot
water temperature of 8890 8C as a heat source to drive the
chiller. Experimental data on the performance of such systems
were reported by several researchers [5,6]. Although a large
potential market exists for this technology, existing solar
cooling systems are not competitive with electricity-driven or
gas-fired air-conditioning systems. The major problems facing
solar absorption cooling systems are its high initial cost, low
system performance, and solar energy usage for only a short
period during 1-day operation [7].
Another potential solar-powered air-conditioning system is
solar adsorption cooling system. It is a better choice to use
adsorption cooling technology for mini type solar-powered airconditioning systems [7]. Up to now, the solar-powered
adsorption systems have mostly been intermittent and used
only for ice making application. For applications such as airconditioning, when the chilled water temperature requirement
is only around 68 8C, two or more adsorption beds can be used
to produce a cooling effect continuously. Numerical simulations have been done to investigate the performance of a solar
powered air-conditioning system driven by simple flat plate
solar collectors [8]. As for working pairs, a silica gel/water

adsorption refrigerator uses waste heat at below 100 8C, which

would be suitable for a wider range of solar thermal collector
types [9].
In this paper, an integrated system of heating, airconditioning, natural ventilation and hot water supply based
on solar energy, which was designed for the green building of
Shanghai institute of architecture science, was introduced in
detail. The design scheme, operation modes as well as
experimental results were discussed.
2. Integrated solar energy system and the green
building
2.1. Integration of solar collectors and green building
Shanghai is characteristic of subtropical monsoonal climate
with the mean annual temperature of 17.6 8C, and receives
annual total radiation above 4470 MJ/m2 with approximately
2000 h of sunshine. The green building of Shanghai Research
Institute of Building Science is situated in Xinzhuang, which is a
burgeoning town of Shanghai. As a demonstration project, the
green building contains multiple green energy technologies, such
as solar thermal technology, solar photovoltaic, natural ventilation, natural lighting, indoor virescence, and the like. Here, we
designed an integrated solar energy system for heating, airconditioning, natural ventilation and hot water supply. As the
power to drive adsorption chillers and the heat source for the floor
heating and natural ventilation, the solar collectors are the most
important parts. We installed 150 m2 solar collectors on the roof
of the green building, wherein U-type evacuated tubular solar
collectors with CPC of area 90 m2 were placed on the west side
(SCW), and the other 60 m2 heat pipe evacuated tubular solar
collectors on the east side (SCE). For the purpose of efficient
utilization of solar energy, the architects designed a steel
structure roof, facing due south and tilted at an angle of 408 to the
ground surface, on which the solar collectors were mounted and
integrated with the building perfectly. Fig. 1 shows the
appearance of the green building integrated with solar collectors.
All solar collectors of both sides were divided into three parallel
rows, as shown in Fig. 2. The collector units in each row were
connected in a series arrangement for the purpose of obtaining
hot water with relatively high temperature, which plays an
important part in improving performance of the solar energy
system. Such an arrangement of solar collectors not only
guarantees high system performance but also improves the
beauty of the building facade. Besides, it provides a feasible idea
for integration of solar collectors and civil buildings especially
for public buildings.
2.2. Design of solar-powered integrated energy system
An integrated energy system based on solar thermal
technologies was designed and set up for building area of
460 m2. As an office building, the hot water demand is not as
significant as that in residential buildings. So, the solar-powered
integrated system design of the green building is mainly
focused on floor heating in winter and air-conditioning in

X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

987

load of air-conditioning area under design condition is 60 kW,

thereinto, 15 kW is sensible cooling load, and the other 45 kW
is latent cooling load. For the same area, the heating load in
winter is 25 kW. The solar integrated energy system was
designed to deal with sensible cooling load in summer and
heating load in winter. The design performance data were
determined according to our previous experiments, and
expressed as following:
(1) The design solar radiant intensity in summer and winter is
650 W/m2 and 450 W/m2, respectively.
(2) The average solar collecting efficiency is 40%.
(3) The COP of solar-powered adsorption chiller is 0.4.
Fig. 1. The external appearance of the green building integrated with solar
collectors. (For interpretation of the reference to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of the article.)

summer. Another novel design is natural ventilation enhanced

by solar hot water, which is effective and necessary to solve the
problem of surplus hot water in transitional seasons. Moreover,
it provides a new method for the design of solar-enhanced
natural ventilation.
The system design was based on the calculation results of
Shanghai Research Institute of Building Science. The cooling

It is obvious that 150 m2 solar collectors are capable of

meeting the heating and cooling of the system under design
condition. Based on the weather statistic data of Shanghai and
the simulation soft ware developed for this project [10], the
solar fraction in winter and summer was predicted to be 50%
and 70%, respectively.
2.2.1. Flow diagram of the integrated solar energy system
Except for solar collectors, the integrated solar energy system
mainly includes two adsorption chillers, floor heating pipes,
finned tube heat exchangers, circulating pumps and a cooling
tower. Besides, a hot water storage tank of 2.5 m3 in volume is
employed to collect solar heat, thereby providing hot water for
the integrated solar energy system. All components are
connected by tubes and valves to form the whole circulating
system. The flow diagram of the integrated solar energy system is
shown in Fig. 3, where AD1 and AD2 are two adsorption chillers,
CT is a cooling tower, WT is a hot water storage tank, P1 and P2
are two solar collecting pumps, P3 and P4 are hot water pump and
cooling water pump, respectively. Through valves located on the
pipes, the integrated solar energy system can be switched to
different operating modes according to different seasons:
(1) In summer, the sensible cooling load is met by solaradsorption air-conditioning system, which is discussed in
this paper. The latent cooling load is taken on by a liquiddesiccant system, which is constructed by Shanghai
Research Institute of Building Science. Thereby, the hybrid
air-conditioning system deals with cooling and humidity
loads independently, and the fan coils inside air-conditioning rooms realize dry operating mode.
(2) In winter, solar-powered floor heating system is used to
satisfy heating load of the green building.
(3) In transitional seasons, solar hot water is pumped into
finned tube heat exchangers to induce stack pressure, which
is capable of improving natural ventilation.
(4) The system can be used to supply hot water as long as a heat
exchanger is installed in parallel with what mentioned above.

Fig. 2. Arrangement of solar collector arrays. (a) Heat pipe evacuated tubular
solar collector arrays. (b) U-type pipe evacuated tubular solar collector arrays.

2.2.2. Adsorption chiller

In order to complete the solar-powered air-conditioning
system, we choose the environment friendly silica-gel/water as
the working pair and invent an adsorption chiller, which is

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X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

Fig. 3. The flow diagram of the integrated solar energy system, showing different operating modes: floor radiation heating (FH), natural ventilation enhanced by solar
hot water (NV), air-conditioning (AC).

capable of working from 55 8C to 95 8C. Fig. 4 shows the photo

of the silica gel-water adsorption chiller. Owing to its
practicability in low temperature, the chiller is testified to be
suitable for solar-powered air-conditioning system. The
performance test shows that the chiller attains rated refrigerating capacity of 8.5 kW when the hot water temperature is
85 8C, and the corresponding COP is 0.4.
Fig. 5 shows the structure of the silica gel-water adsorption
chiller. This silica gel-water adsorption chiller is composed of
three working vacuum chambers including two desorption/
adsorption chambers and one heat pipe working chamber. In the
adsorption chamber, water is taken as the refrigerant, while in
the heat pipe working chamber, methanol is used as the working
substance.
The evaporation cooling in evaporator 1 or 2 is transferred to
the methanol chamber via heat pipe evaporation/condensation

process. Chilled water is cooled down in the methanol chamber

directly. This design idea has made two water evaporators
(Evaporator 1, Evaporator 2) integrated into one methanol
evaporator. Table 1 lists the main performance indices of the
adsorption chiller.
2.2.3. Floor heating pipe
Floor heating systems are becoming increasing popular due
to the fact that they may provide a more comfortable indoor

Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of the heat pipe type silica gel-water adsorption
chiller.
Table 1
Main performance indices of the adsorption chiller

Fig. 4. The photo of the silica gel-water adsorption chiller.

Performance of the adsorption chiller

Performance index

Unit

Refrigerating output
Outlet temperature of chilled water
Flow rate of chilled water
Inlet temperature of cooling water
Flow rate of cooling water
Inlet temperature of hot water
Flow rate of hot water
Working pressure of chilled water system
Working pressure of cooling water system
Working pressure of hot water system
Weight in operation
Power supply

8.5
10
1.5
32
5
85
3.6
0.6
0.6
0.6
1.5
2F220 V50 Hz

kW
8C
t/h
8C
t/h
8C
t/h
MPa
MPa
MPa
T

X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

989

Fig. 8. Finned tube heat exchanger inside air channel.

Fig. 6. The photo of floor heating coil pipe.

environment than convective heating systems. Generally, the

supply water temperature of floor heating system is relatively
lower, which leads to the feasibility of low-grade heat source.
As a result, solar energy is suitable for floor heating system. In
this project, we chose cuprotherm floor heating system
produced by Wieland Ltd. of Shanghai. The floor heating coil
pipes are made of high-quality pure copper with the dimension
of F12  0.7 mm, as shown in Fig. 6. They were fixed on the
30-mm thick polystyrene insulation layer with spacing interval
200 mm. And then crushed stone concrete was poured with the
thickness of 70 mm. Fig. 7 shows the arrangement of floor
heating coil pipes.
2.2.4. Finned tube heat exchanger
There is an air channel under the roof of the green building,
which is designed by architects for indoor air exhaust through
natural ventilation. In order to enhance natural ventilation by
stack pressure, we installed seven groups of heat exchange
elements inside the air channel. Each group consists of three

parallel finned tube heat exchangers as shown in Fig. 8. The

finned tube heat exchanger is made of a 3-m long copper tube
with 540 square fins. The diameter of the tube is 20 mm and
the sectional dimension of the square fins is 102 mm 
102 mm.
2.2.5. Data acquisition and control system
The whole system is controlled by an industrial control
computer and operates automatically. The temperatures are
recorded by platinum resistance thermometers, which are
fixed at main points of the system either for inspection or for
control. The flow rate is measured by revolving flowmeter.
Besides, an actinometer is used to measure solar radiant
intensity. The data were recorded at every 15 s interval in a
data logger, which is connected to the industrial control
computer.
3. Performance of solar-powered integrated system
3.1. Instantaneous efficiency of solar collector arrays
In this system, the operation of solar collecting pump is
controlled by the temperature difference between solar
collectors and the hot water storage tank. Consequently, the
collected solar heat is extracted whenever it is available. The
two solar collector arrays were tested on the efficiency
characteristics under identical weather conditions to evaluate
their respective performance. The instantaneous experimental
collector efficiency data were expressed as the function of
(Tin  Ta)/I. It is well known that the transmittance of glass
varies with solar incident angle. The data corresponding to
noon were used. The efficiency for the two solar collector
arrays can be respectively denoted as:
For heat pipe evacuated tubular solar collector array:
hhp 0:65  2:94T in  T a =I

(1)

For U-type evacuated tubular solar collector array:

Fig. 7. Arrangement of floor heating coil pipe integrated with floor.

hU 0:45  1:10T in  T a =I

(2)

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X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

Fig. 9. Variations of ambient temperature and solar radiant intensity.

Fig. 11. Variation of heating capacity.

where Tin and Ta are respectively inlet temperature of solar

water heating collector and air temperature, I is the solar radiant
intensity (W/m2).

After hot water in the storage tank is heated to 40 8C, the

floor heating pump is switched on to circulate hot water
between the storage tank and copper pipes underneath the floor
surface until the temperature of hot water in the storage tank
decreases below 30 8C. Fig. 9 shows variations of ambient
temperature and solar radiant intensity under representative
weather condition of Shanghai. It can be concluded that daily
solar radiation and average ambient temperature are 18 MJ/m2
and 1.98 8C, respectively. Fig. 10 shows variations of supply
water temperature and back water temperature during the
whole operation. It is seen that the solar floor heating system
operates continuously for about 12 h with average supply and
back water temperature of 51.17 8C and 44.68 8C, respectively.

Also can be seen is that, initially, both supply water

temperature and back water temperature go up, and then fall
off, which is in accord with the variation of solar insolation.
Correspondingly, the heating capacity has similar trend as
shown in Fig. 11. The average heating capacity is 21.74 kW in the
whole operation, and it attains 25.04 kW during the working
hours from 9:00 to 17:00, which is sufficient to keep indoor
thermal environment. As a result, the heating floor temperature
and air temperature reaches 23.71 8C and 17.10 8C, respectively,
which is higher than those of non-heating room by 16.10 8C and
9.16 8C, respectively, as shown in Fig. 12.
The solar-powered floor radiation heating system has been in
operation in sunny days and cloudy days from Dec. 1st, 2004 to
Mar. 13th, 2005. With respect to the whole heating period, the
floor heating system was capable of meeting heating
requirement in 58 days. Experimental results based on these
58 days are listed in Table 2. It is concluded that the solar
fraction is 56%, which agrees well with the predicted value with
the relative error of 10.7%.

Fig. 10. Variations of supply water temperature and back water temperature
during the whole operation.

Fig. 12. Variations of all-day temperatures in floor heating room and nonheating room.

3.2. Floor radiation heating performance

X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

991

Table 2
Summarization of solar-powered floor heating experiments
Month/year
(mm/yy)

Average ambient
temperature (8C)

Daily solar
insolation (MJ/m2)

Solar collecting
efficiency (%)

Heating
capacity (kW)

Floor
temperature (8C)

Indoor
temperature (8C)

12/2004
01/2005
02/2005
03/2005

12.12
3.39
2.97
8.26

13.04
14.41
15.76
16.68

39.5
40.6
38.7
41.0

22.7
24.6
26.3
27.8

23.43
20.91
22.83
24.02

17.63
13.19
14.14
16.69

3.3. Air-conditioning performance

Since the adsorption refrigerating is characteristic of
periodicity and variable behavior, we optimize the operating
mode by maintaining half a periodic time between two
adsorption chillers. Thereafter, the whole system realizes stable
operation by the balance of heat consumption and refrigerating
output. Fig. 13 shows variations of ambient temperature and
solar radiant intensity under representative weather condition of
Shanghai. It is deduced that daily solar insolation and average
ambient temperature are 20.36 MJ/m2 and 31.66 8C, respectively. Experimental results show that the air-conditioning
system operates efficiently for 8 h from 9:00 to 17:00. Fig. 14
shows the variations of inlet and outlet temperatures of hot
water, cooling water and chilled water during system operation,
where Thw,in and Thw,o are inlet and outlet temperature of hot
water, respectively, correspondingly, Tco,in and Tco,o for cooling
water, and Tchill,in and Tchill,o for chilled water. During
operation, the average hot water temperature is 70.24 8C and
the maximum value reaches 75.58 8C at 13:00. Besides, the
average outlet temperature of chilled water is 18.48 8C, which
is suitable for dry operating mode of the air-conditioning
system. Also can be seen is that the chilled water temperature
difference between inlet and outlet averages at 3.53 8C.
Fig. 15 shows variation of refrigerating output. It is seen that
the system yields average refrigerating output of 15.31 kW
during the whole operation, which satisfies design standard.
With regard to heat consumption of two adsorption chillers, the
average system COP is 0.35, and average solar COP is 0.15
concerning daily solar insolation. Moreover, the maximal

Fig. 13. Variation of ambient temperature and solar radiant intensity.

refrigerating output exceeds 20 kW. As for solar-powered airconditioning system, it is significant to reduce power
consumption; consequently, electric COP is another important
index to evaluate performance of the system. In this system,
taking two solar collecting pumps (P1 and P2), hot water pump
(P3) and cooling water pump (P4) into account, the whole
power consumption is 1.87 kW, and then the electric COP
averages at 8.19 during 8-h operation, and the maximum
exceeds 10.
From June to August in 2005, the solar-powered airconditioning system along with the liquid-desiccant system

Fig. 14. Variations of inlet and outlet temperatures of hot water, cooling water
and chilled water during system operation.

Fig. 15. Variation of refrigerating output.

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X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

Table 3
Summarization of solar-powered adsorption air-conditioning system experiments
Month/year
(mm/yy)

Average ambient
temperature (8C)

Daily solar
insolation (MJ/m2)

Solar collecting
efficiency (%)

Refrigerating
output (kW)

Average
system COP

Average
solar COP

06/2005
07/2005
08/2005

29.86
33.77
31.89

17.71
18.96
17.24

35.64
37.41
38.02

10.29
11.23
10.77

0.29
0.36
0.32

0.11
0.12
0.11

have continuously run in working hour (9:0017:00) of the

green building. Experimental results of three months are
summarized in Table 3. It is concluded that average
refrigeration capacity is 10.76 kW. Accordingly, the average
system COP and average solar COP is 0.32 and 0.12,
respectively. Solar fraction for the system in summer
attains 72% corresponding to the design cooling load, which
accords well with the predicted value with the relative error
of 2.8%.
3.4. Natural ventilation performance
The hot water in the storage tank is pumped to the finned
tube heat exchangers placed inside the air channel, where the
air is heated through free convection, which leads to the
increase of stack pressure. We lay a strong emphasis on the
measurement of the temperature difference between inlet and
outlet of the air channel due to the fact that it is in proportion to
stack pressure.
Experimental results of two days with similar ambient
temperature (10 8C) and daily solar insolation (17 MJ/m2) are
chosen to compare the performance of solar-enhanced natural
ventilation with conventional natural ventilation. Fig. 16 shows
the variations of supply and back water temperature of finned
tube heat exchanger. It is seen that the average supply water
temperature is 59.15 8C, which is main factor to determine the
performance of solar-powered natural ventilation. Also can be
seen is that the temperature difference between supply and back
water nearly maintains 3 8C during whole operation.

Fig. 16. Variations of supply and back water temperature of finned tube heat
exchanger.

Fig. 17 shows the comparison of inlet and outlet air

temperature difference between conventional natural ventilation and solar-enhanced natural ventilation. It is concluded
through experiments that the average temperature difference
between the inlet and the outlet of the air channel is 2.6 8C
when the hot water temperature is 59.15 8C (Fig. 17(a)).
However, it is only 0.6 8C for the conventional natural
ventilation mode (Fig. 17(b)). Therefore, the stack pressure
built up by solar hot water is about four times of that formed in
the conventional natural ventilation. Under otherwise identical
conditions, the natural ventilation air flow rate is in proportion
to the square root of stack pressure. As a result, the natural
ventilation air flow rate induced by stack pressure is doubled.

Fig. 17. Variation of air temperature difference between inlet and outlet of air
channel. (a) Solar-enhanced natural ventilation mode. (b) Conventional natural
ventilation mode.

X.Q. Zhai et al. / Energy and Buildings 39 (2007) 985993

Experimental results show that 68% of the days in transition

seasons were either sunny days or cloudy days, during which
the system was switched to enhance natural ventilation for the
purpose of consuming surplus hot water besides hot water
supply. The average natural ventilation air change rate induced
by solar hot water is 3 ACH with regard to the involved space.
3.5. Summary of all-year operation of the solar-powered
integrated energy system
From September 2004 to August 2005, the solar-powered
integrated energy system has been continuously in operation
under different modes according to different seasons. Based on
all-the-year-round experimental data, it is concluded that solar
fraction for the system in winter is 56%, correspondingly, 72%
in summer and 68% in transition seasons. Then the mean annual
utilization ratio of the system nearly reaches 70% through
weighted average calculation of solar fractions in different
seasons and the corresponding days.
4. Conclusion
We design and construct a solar-powered integrated energy
system involving heating, air-conditioning, natural ventilation and hot water supplying, which realizes high integration
of solar thermal technologies, and therefore increases
utilization ratio of solar system. As a brief summary, it is
wished to emphasize the significant points of this work in the
following.
(1) For the first time, we put adsorption cooling technology into
practice in solar-powered air-conditioning system of green
building. The solar adsorption air-conditioning system
operates efficiently during 8 working hours under typical
sunny weather condition. The corresponding average
electric COP exceeds 8; furthermore, the maximal value
reaches 10. Solar-powered air-conditioning therefore
becomes practical because of utilization of evacuated
tubular solar collectors which are widely available in the
market.

993

(2) Under the climate condition of Shanghai, 150 m2 vacuum

tube solar collector arrays can be used to satisfy heating and
air-conditioning for covered area of 460 m2. In addition,
they are capable of inducing natural ventilation by stack
pressure and supplying hot water for the office building.
The solar-powered integrated energy system can take on
about 70% of the yearly building load regarding the
involved space.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the state Key Fundamental
Research Program under the contract No. G2000026309 P.R.C.,
and the Shanghai Commission of Science and Technology
under the contract No. 03DZ12012.
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