Worldwide: Initiators of Solar Process Heat Database Look to Add More Reference Projects
The middle of March saw the launch of the online database http://www.ship-plants.info, which has so far collected 122 projects using Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP). The database was created in the frame of Task 49/IV of the Solar Heating and Cooling Programme by the International Energy Agency. The energy output of the database’s 122 solar process heat plants from around the world adds up to 87.8 MW, which is equal to 125,600 m2 of collector area. Solar process heat engineers, planners, system integrators and energy service companies are all welcome to add reference projects to the online platform.
“Our aims are to show the potential of solar thermal heat in industrial processes and to learn from successful implementations,” project leaders AEE Intec, Austria, and PSE, Germany, are quoted on the website. The initial survey was carried out by AEE Intec, the Institute for Sustainable Technologies, which was also responsible for arranging and incorporating the gathered information into the database. AEE Intec financed the project by Task 49 grants from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology.
Filter allows to search by different categories
Each project description consists of at least the collector field size, the collector technology and the integration point in the production process. Some project developers also filled in economic parameters and lessons learned, for example, as Jordanian company Millennium Energy Industries (MEI) did for the project in Cyprus shown on the screenshot above. “We check the plausibility of all delivered project information before uploading,” Wolfgang Glatzl, Project Leader at AEE Intec, explains.
Service provider PSE took over the entire programming and design work for the database. The company created a filter to allow users to search by different categories, such as type of collector, industry sector, country, solar energy storage and point of solar heat integration. A drop-down menu for most search items facilitates the choice of the correct keywords. The Report subsection also contains a list of all available projects, sorted by collector field size and starting with the 39,300 m2 installation at the Chilean Gaby copper mine.
All project developers or solar process heat collector manufacturers which would like to add reference projects to the database have to create an account on the website first. They can then add a new project or edit existing projects. AEE Intec checks all additional information before making it available to the public.
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