Types of Solar Panel

Evacuated Tubes

Evacuated tube collectors use a series of glass tubes that act like thermos bottles. The glass allows the light through, which heats up a fluid inside an inner copper tube (also having a vacuum).

The vacuum between the layers of glass prevents that heat from escaping back to the atmosphere on cold days. Because the fluid inside this pipe is under vacuum it boils at a very low temperature and so the steam rises to the top of the solar tube, acting very like a heat pump.

The heat is then extracted via a Manifold and pumped to the hot water cylinder. For these reasons Vacuum Tubes are very good at extracting energy and heating water to useful temperatures, even on cold and (light) cloudy days.

On warm, sunny days, the performance of the vacuum collector is equal to that of the flat collector. But it will increasingly outperform the flat collector as the outside temperature decreases or light levels are reduced.

These tubes are all connected together through a manifold. These arrangements come in 3 different arrangements 18, 24, 30. Using these various sizes the panels can be increased in size to suit whatever type of system is required.

Advantages of this system:

• Life expectancy more than 20 years
• Corrosion resistant
• Aluminium manifold & frame
• Low maintenance a single tube can be replaced at a time
• High performance, even in adverse weather conditions due to vacuum insulation
• Ease of installation - each tube can be installed individually
• Minimum maintenance requirement - a single tube can be replaced at a time.