Does it , or has it help keep your solar tank heated in the winter months . Have you seen any temp rise in the water when there has been no sun but been windy ? I have a similar size water tank and turbine and was thinking of trying a heating element in the tank .
I did just that this past weekend. I bypassed my DHW from the solar tank, shutoff the zone from my wood stove, and turned off the circ pump for the hydronic and hot tub in my basement. In the first hour the temp came up about 2 degrees on 425 gallons of water. I was pretty excited. I left to plow out my truck dealership; was gone for at least 5 hours, and came back ant the temp was lower than it started?
? The wind was blowing good the whole time. The only thing I can think of that would effect the outcome of that test is the way my hydronic is plumbed to my basement. My garage (and solar tank) are 7' below my basement (it's an underground garage with only the doors exposed to the outdoors. I noticed this summer if I didn't turn off the ball valves to my hydronic system, I was getting a thermosyphon effect to those fin tubes in the basement, much like a thermosyphon solar collector. For the test this weekend, I forgot about the possibility of that happening, and throwing off my test results. I also have never checked on what the rate of heat loss is on the tank when nothing is pulling heat off it.
Guess the long and short is; I'm not sure what the actual production of the heating elements are.
Sorry.
Tom
