Abstract
An investigation has been carried for the thermal characteristics of the seasonal storage installation in Cheju. It features the solar collector area of $340m^2$ and the storage capacity of $600m^3$. Four different types of solar collector systems are compared for their performance of collecting solar energy throughout the year. Of these, two are made of tubular shaped vacuum collectors and the others are flat plate collectors. Results indicate that each system could play an important role in exploiting solar energy depending on the temperature range in its operation. Especially, the vacuum collectors outperformed the others when the inlet temperatures of the collector loop were raised beyond $40m^2$. This became more conspicuous as the return temperatures from the storage tank rose reflecting the seasonal variation. Due to the large heat capacity of the storage tank, temperature changes were rather small compared to those in the collecting loop regardless of seasonal fluctuations.
