Feasibility and importance of an automatic controller for solar hot water system

This conference paper was presented in the 2011 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, GHTC 2011; Seattle, WA; United States; 30 October 2011 through 1 November 2011 [© 2011 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.] The conference paper's definite version is available at: http://doi.org/10.1109/GHTC.2011.36Being a developing country, Bangladesh has a very poor condition in terms of generating electricity. Alongside, natural resources like fuel and coal are in limited amount and will not be able to sustain forever. As a result, sustainable energy is starting to gain its popularity in Bangladesh. Being a geographically suitable country for harvesting, solar energy can be a prime source of generating electricity in Bangladesh in a green way. Generating electricity in commercial scale using solar panels can take a few years because of the panels being very expensive. But another way to utilize this energy is by using it to heat up water. Hospitals, industries, households - any kind of infrastructure requires hot water and a lot of electricity and gas is being used up for that. Keeping that in mind, this project for developing an automatic solar hot water system was commenced and completed. Solar hot water systems are also growing in Bangladesh but the automatic controller that we have developed is a new concept here. The controller makes the system user friendly, requires less interaction with humans and provides uninterrupted hot water with least maintenance.Publishe