Energy Assessment and Economic Study of Solar Floor Heating System in Different Climates in Morocco

Abstract Currently, the development of energy production projects in the building sector using alternative energy sources such as solar energy are growing rapidly. This increasing technological progress to achieve the needs of comfort and safety can be considered a major priority, particularly with concerns about energy shortages and current environmental issues threatening not only human well-being but ecosystems as well. The present research aims to provide a comprehensive model for enhancing the energetic performance of rural Moroccan houses. The evaluation of the solar floor heating system is carried out by TRNSYS to evidence the effect of various design parameters on performance indexes of the system concerning six Moroccan cities, which representatively correspond to the Moroccan climatic zoning. The examined analyses cover the effect of the collector area, storage tank volume, mass flow rate in the solar loop and the building loop, thickness and piping material. The major finding of this work is optimizing the system performance gives the possibility to meet adequately the heating load. The energetic analysis shows the system's adaptability to the Moroccan climate, whose solar fraction is around 65% and 87%. For most of examined sites, it was observed that the demand for auxiliary energy is limited from October to May. The economic investigations revealed that payback periods of the examined system ranged between 7 and 13 years. Besides, the energy and economic outcomes of such systems in Morocco, they are capable to mitigate huge amount CO2 emissions as compared to conventional heating systems.