There are many ways you can keep your house warm during cold season especially on winter. You have your fireplace where you can burn coals to provide heat inside your house. However, in case of extreme cold weather, the heat provided by your fireplace is not enough to cover every corner of your house. You can also use electric heater, but for sure your electric bill for that particular month will increase.

You want the water in your swimming pool to be lukewarm or you need a hot shower in your bath. Just the same, you need to use relatively large amount of power to convert cold to hot water. It will be an additional cost to your electric bill.

In this case, you need a solar heating system that you can use for such purpose without eventually worrying about the power supply and its cost as well. For those who are still unaware of what it is and its function as well as its components, better read the rest of this article.

An Overview of the Solar Heating System

Solar heating system uses the energy of sunlight to provide heat on a certain structure. It may be used to heat water (either for shower or for drinking) or a swimming pool, or to supply heat for a heating circuit (usually radiators or floor heating coils) that makes inside the house warm.

In many places, including the United States, a solar heating system can give a satisfactorily high percentage (usually between 50 to 75 percent) of domestic hot water energy. In northern European countries, combined hot water and space heating systems can produce 15 to 25 percent of home heating energy.

It generally consists of the following components:

* Solar heating panel- it collects the sunlight that will be converted into thermal energy;
* Fluid system- it transports the converted energy from the panel to its point of usage; and
* Heat reservoir- it stores some of the heat produced for subsequent use.

However, this article will be focusing on the first component, which is the solar heating panel.

Solar Heating Panel in Work

Solar heating panels (SHP) are collections of solar cells and solar thermal collectors that are used primarily to capture energy from the sun. It is quite distinctive to the solar photovoltaic panels (SPP) in the sense that the latter is used to provide electricity to the structure. However, SPP and SHP have the same function in capturing energy from sunlight.

SHP works by placing it on direct sunlight, preferably on the roof of your house, or on a wall facing the sun. It has the usual solar cells which will convert solar energy into thermal energy, and solar thermal collectors which have a set of metal tubes surrounded by a glass cylinder. It has also a parabolic mirror to concentrate the sunlight on the tube.

The heat that is generated through SHP will be stored in a hot water tank that will be the source for hot water in case of cold weather condition. For home heating purposes, SHP is connected to an internal radiator or floor heating coils that will provide heat inside the house.

You can have a warm atmosphere inside your house and hot water to mix with your favorite chocolate powder without worrying about your electric bill by using a solar heating panel.