An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.
In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, reflect, and distribute solar energy, in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design because, unlike active solar heating systems, it does not involve the use of mechanical and electrical devices.
A thermostat is a regulating device component which senses the temperature of a physical system and performs actions so that the system's temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint.
Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. In industry, hot water and water heated to steam have many uses.
Solar water heating (SWH) is heating water by sunlight, using a solar thermal collector. A variety of configurations are available at varying cost to provide solutions in different climates and latitudes. SWHs are widely used for residential and some industrial applications.
A solar thermal collector collects heat by absorbing sunlight. The term "solar collector" commonly refers to a device for solar hot water heating, but may refer to large power generating installations such as solar parabolic troughs and solar towers or non-water heating devices such as solar cookers or solar air heaters.
A storage heater or heat bank (Australia) is an electrical heater which stores thermal energy during the evening, or at night when electricity is available at lower cost, and releases the heat during the day as required. Alternatively, solar storage heaters are designed to store solar energy as heat, to be released during the night or other periods where it is required, often making it more cost effective than selling surplus electricity to the grid and buying it back at night.
Thermal energy storage (TES) is the storage of thermal energy for later reuse. Employing widely different technologies, it allows surplus thermal energy to be stored for hours, days, or months. Scale both of storage and use vary from small to large – from individual processes to district, town, or region. Usage examples are the balancing of energy demand between daytime and nighttime, storing summer heat for winter heating, or winter cold for summer cooling. Storage media include water or ice-slush tanks, masses of native earth or bedrock accessed with heat exchangers by means of boreholes, deep aquifers contained between impermeable strata; shallow, lined pits filled with gravel and water and insulated at the top, as well as eutectic solutions and phase-change materials.
Electric heating is a process in which electrical energy is converted directly to heat energy. Common applications include space heating, cooking, water heating and industrial processes. An electric heater is an electrical device that converts an electric current into heat. The heating element inside every electric heater is an electrical resistor, and works on the principle of Joule heating: an electric current passing through a resistor will convert that electrical energy into heat energy. Most modern electric heating devices use nichrome wire as the active element; the heating element, depicted on the right, uses nichrome wire supported by ceramic insulators.
A circulator pump or circulating pump is a specific type of pump used to circulate gases, liquids, or slurries in a closed circuit with small elevation changes. They are commonly found circulating water in a hydronic heating or cooling system. They are specialized in providing a large flow rate rather than providing much head, as they are supposed to only overcome the friction of a piping system, as opposed to a regular centrifugal pump which may need to lift a fluid significantly.
Renewable heat is an application of renewable energy referring to the generation of heat from renewable sources; for example, feeding radiators with water warmed by focused solar radiation rather than by a fossil fuel boiler. Renewable heat technologies include renewable biofuels, solar heating, geothermal heating, heat pumps and heat exchangers. Insulation is almost always an important factor in how renewable heating is implemented.
Seasonal thermal energy storage (STES), also known as inter-seasonal thermal energy storage, is the storage of heat or cold for periods of up to several months. The thermal energy can be collected whenever it is available and be used whenever needed, such as in the opposing season. For example, heat from solar collectors or waste heat from air conditioning equipment can be gathered in hot months for space heating use when needed, including during winter months. Waste heat from industrial process can similarly be stored and be used much later or the natural cold of winter air can be stored for summertime air conditioning.
A solar combisystem provides both solar space heating and cooling as well as hot water from a common array of solar thermal collectors, usually backed up by an auxiliary non-solar heat source.
The Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) is a planned community in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada, equipped with a central solar heating system and other energy efficient technologies. This heating system is the first of its kind in North America, although much larger systems have been built in northern Europe. The 52 homes in the community are heated with a solar district heating system that is charged with heat originating from solar collectors on the garage roofs and is enabled for year-round heating by underground seasonal thermal energy storage (STES).
An instant hot water dispenser or boiling water tap is an appliance that dispenses water at about 94 °C (201 °F) (near-boiling). There are hot-only and hot and cool water models, and the water may be filtered as well as heated. Instant hot water dispensers became popular in the 1970s. Instant hot water dispensers are very similar to portable shower devices; the latter is fitted with a heating element and quickly heats up water, once a switch has been activated.
Thermal destratification is the process of mixing the internal air in a building to eliminate stratified layers and achieve temperature equalization throughout the building envelope.
In spacecraft design, the function of the thermal control system (TCS) is to keep all the spacecraft's component systems within acceptable temperature ranges during all mission phases. It must cope with the external environment, which can vary in a wide range as the spacecraft is exposed to the extreme coldness found in the shadows of deep space or to the intense heat found in the unfiltered direct sunlight of outer space. A TCS must also moderate the internal heat generated by the operation of the spacecraft it serves.
Tankless water heaters — also called instantaneous, continuous flow, inline, flash, on-demand, or instant-on water heaters — are water heaters that instantly heat water as it flows through the device, and do not retain any water internally except for what is in the heat exchanger coil unless the unit is equipped with an internal buffer tank. Copper heat exchangers are preferred in these units because of their high thermal conductivity and ease of fabrication. However, copper heat exchangers are more susceptible to scale buildup than stainless steel heat exchangers.
A storage water heater, or a hot water system (HWS), is a domestic water heating appliance that uses a hot water storage tank to maximize water heating capacity and provide instantaneous delivery of hot water. Conventional storage water heaters use a variety of fuels, including natural gas, propane, fuel oil, and electricity. Less conventional water heating technologies, such as heat pump water heaters and solar water heaters, can also be categorized as storage water heaters.
The Glossary of Geothermal Heating and Cooling provides definitions of many terms used within the Geothermal heat pump industry. The terms in this glossary may be used by industry professionals, for education materials, and by the general public.
