Edinburgh Napier University

  Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the advantages of a solar store system with transpired solar air collector (TSC) in North Wales, UK. The collectors are designed as a proposal to meet the target of the solar air storage and heating project to improve the efficiency of solar collectors in the UK.

Design/methodology/approach
IES software simulation is used to examine the potential of a solar store system in Deeside Leisure Centre compared to the traditional constant air volume (CAV) system and CAV system with heat pump. The design parameters and configurations are determined on the basis of the monitoring results gained from recent experiments.

Findings
The result demonstrates good agreement between simulations and monitoring results and the solar store system demonstrates considerably lower energy consumption compared to the traditional CAV system with and without heat pump.

Originality/value
The usage of TSC is proven to be useful in improving COP of the heat pumps and reducing overall energy consumption in a leisure center. The framework proposed in this study could also be applied to different building types in order to highlight their advantages.