Techno-economic and reliability assessment of solar water heaters in Australia based on Monte Carlo analysis

Monte Carlo analysis is used in this study to estimate the techno-economic benefits and reliabilities of solar water heaters. The study focuses on a product range manufactured by a local company in Australia. The historical data provided by the company forms the basis of this investigation. The inverse Weibull distribution function is a good match for representing the historical data in the model in terms of the number of failures per operating time for each component. The overall system reliability is determined as the sum of individual component failures during the product lifetime. The analysis is carried out for different system configurations using copper, stainless steel and glass-lined storage tanks. All the systems utilise flat plate collectors. The product with glass-lined storage tanks and electric boosters show a good overall reliability if systems are maintained.

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