Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER)

By admin at 3 January, 2009, 4:29 am

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Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER) – A measure of seasonal or annual efficiency of a central air conditioner or air conditioning heat pump. It takes into account the variations in temperature that can occur within a season and is the average number of BTU of cooling delivered for every watt-hour of electricity used by the heat pump over a cooling season. The higher the SEER the better for keeping utility bills low.

Solar Access or Rights – The legal issues related to protecting or ensuring access to sunlight to operate a solar energy system, or use solar energy for heating and cooling.

Solar Air Heater – A type of solar thermal system where air is heated in a collector and either transferred directly to the interior space or to a storage medium, such as a rock bin.

Solar Collector – Devices for capturing the sun’s energy over a large area and focusing it on a small area, thereby concentrating it. In this way, it can produce extremely high temperatures used to either generate steam that will expand, heat a working fluid for heat transfer, or to carry out a chemical reaction to create a portable fuel such as hydrogen. Solar collectors may be curved dishes – like satellite receiving dishes – coated with reflective material, or can consist of an array of reflectors, arranged like flower petals, focusing onto a central point or arranged lineally. Usually the dish or the individual reflectors can be steered to follow the sun across the sky.

Solar Cooling – The use of solar thermal energy or solar electricity to power a cooling appliance. There are five basic types of solar cooling technologies: 1) absorption cooling, which can use solar thermal energy to vaporize the refrigerant; 2) desiccant cooling, which can use solar thermal energy to regenerate (dry) the desiccant; 3) vapor compression cooling, which can use solar thermal energy to operate a Rankine-cycle heat engine; 4) evaporative coolers (“swamp” coolers); and 5) heat-pumps and air conditioners that can be powered by solar photovoltaic systems.

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