In this issue
Europe: Solar Keymark Network to Improve Complaint Procedures

IEA SHC: Task 56 Kick-Off Meeting on Building Integrated Solar

Bulgaria: Prisoners Make Solar Water Heaters in Sofia

Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe: Solar Thermal Policies under Development

China: “Now we should concentrate on technological progress and new applications in industry and agriculture”
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Solar district heating on the rise with huge potential in Europe

Dear Solarthermalworld.org Reader, 

 

23 new and upgraded solar district heating systems above 350 kWth (500m²) started operating in 2015. Their total capacity: 190 MWth. Denmark continued to dominate the European solar district heating market as in previous years. Last year, only three plants were located outside of the smallest of the Scandinavian countries – one in Austria, one in Italy and one in Sweden. According to the statistics compiled by Jan-Olof Dalenbäck from the Chalmers University of Technology, there were around 200 collector fields feeding into district or block heating networks across Europe. The map above from the study Heat Roadmap Europe 2050 - Second pre-study for the EU27 shows the huge potential of district heating plants in Europe – most of them have made no use of solar yet. Good news came from Germany and Spain: After several years without any new larger installations, several fields above 2,000 m² were announced in these two countries. 

 

Have a good read

The Editorial Team

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Europe: Solar Keymark Network to Improve Complaint Procedures
by Bärbel Epp

The Solar Keymark Network has decided to establish a working group in order to revise and improve the complaint procedures and put them into one document, as they have so far been described in several different papers. This move is deemed necessary because at the end of 2015 – for the first time since the Solar Keymark label was launched – several complaints were submitted to one of the empowered certification bodies. In brief, the experts criticised that the heat loss coefficients c1 in certain Solar Keymark Certificates were too low and together with the unusual high c2 values, they led to an overvalued collector yield at 50 °C.

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IEA SHC: Task 56 Kick-Off Meeting on Building Integrated Solar
by Bärbel Epp
 

Almost 30 experts from 25 partner organisations met in Bolzano, Italy, on 21 and 22 March for the kick-off meeting of IEA SHC Task 56, Building Integrated Solar Envelope Systems for HVAC and Lighting. The overall goal of the task is to find out “why some ways of solar integration do work, while others don’t,” as the Task Operating Agent and Coordinator of the Sustainable Heating and Cooling Systems research team at Italian institute EURAC, Roberto Fedrizzi, put it – and, of course, to find measures to improve solar technology integration into façades and roofs.

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Bulgaria: Prisoners Make Solar Water Heaters in Sofia
by Frank Stier

When it comes to renewable energies policy, Bulgaria is certainly not the most progressive country in Europe. So what GE Prisons Production did was an even more notable endeavour: The government-owned company established a so-called Green Plant on the premises of the Sofia Central Prison to manufacture solar water heaters. The Bulgarian-Norwegian cooperation project had already been presented to the public in November 2015, but production hasn’t started yet, due to delay with the certification of the products.

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Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe: Solar Thermal Policies under Development
by Bärbel Epp
 

A growing number of countries in Southern Africa follow the example of South Africa and Namibia to set targets and discuss regulations for an increased deployment of solar water heaters. The reasons are the acute power shortages and the fact that residential households spend 60 % of their electricity on hot water preparation when they use an electric geyser. Lesotho and Zimbabwe launched national strategies in September 2015 to ban electric geysers and Mozambique’s Science and Technology Ministry confirmed the target of installing 0.1 m² collector area per capita by 2030, as had been defined in the Solar Thermal Technology Roadmap for Zimbabwe in November 2015.

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China: “Now we should concentrate on technological progress and new applications in industry and agriculture”
by Bärbel Epp

Last year’s decline in the Chinese solar thermal market was greater than expected: Statements by the Chinese Solar Thermal Industry Federation (CSTIF) during the annual assembly in Suzhou, Jiangsu, in November 2015, indicated that around 43.5 million m² had been newly installed in 2015 – 17 % less than in the previous year. Back in October 2015, solar thermal analyst Hongzhi Cheng expected the market only to drop to 50 million m². The annual industry meeting gathers hundreds of industry stakeholders in a different city every time, and it is organised by CSTIF in cooperation with the China Association of Rural Energy Industry (CAREI).

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NEWS TICKER
Crimea: Plans to Establish New Collector Production
Poland: Two More Public Hospitals to Get Collector System
India: Hybrid Solar Heat Pump System Brings Power Consumption down by a Factor 10 on sunny days
Great Britain: Solar thermal proposed to exit the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme
Cuba: Solar Water Heating Could Reduce Pressure on Power Grid
Smart Heat: Ruvi Solar Highlights Customer Experience
India: Union Budget for 2016/2017 Has New Frame Conditions – For Better or Worse