LED technology has greatly changed the face of the lighting market: In just a few years, lighting systems have become twice as efficient and half as expensive. These changes have resulted in a large but often untapped cost- and energy-saving potential in commercial buildings. The research in Task 50 of the IEA SHC programme, Advanced Lighting Solutions for Retrofitting Buildings, has shown that the lighting industry is increasingly exploring opportunities for the use of contracting instead of leasing solutions to convince customers of retrofits. All in all, these contracting solutions are less complex than the ones for heat

South Africa’s solar process heat installations remain profitable when they have to compete against other heat sources, such as diesel, paraffin, petrol or gas. One case study is Cape Brewing Company (CBC) based in Western Cape, who invited to tender in January 2015 for a solar process heat installation. South African E3 Energy won by offering a 121 m² collector system with a levelised cost of energy of 7.9 EUR cents/kWh, an internal rate of return of 16.7 % and a payback period of 9.3 years. The system went into operation in November 2015 and the COO of CBC, Andy Kung, seems satisfied with the performance and the energy saving it offers.

The Indian government should provide the same assertive publicity for solar thermal technology as it had for solar PV, because the population still needed to be made aware of the benefits of solar water heating. This was the major concern raised during the panel discussion Policy and Regulatory Framework for Solar Water Heater Market Development in India held during the Renewable Energy India Exhibition and Conference 2016 near New Delhi at the beginning of September.

Friday, 23 September 2016, was the inauguration date for the now largest solar thermal collector field in Germany. Since August, 8,300 m² of vacuum tube collectors (5.8 MW_th) set up in the town of Senftenberg, 140 km south of Berlin, have been feeding energy into the municipality’s district heating network. The previously largest field since 2005 – a 7,300 m² flat plate collector installation (5.1 MW_th) – is located in the southern German town of Crailsheim. The new Senftenberg solar field was designed, manufactured and implemented by German system integrator Ritter XL Solar.

How can urban planners be convinced to consider solar energy technologies in municipality projects? This is the key challenge faced by the international group of researchers of Task 51, Solar Energy in Urban Planning. One way to attract interest from these planners is to present them with case studies of successfully implemented solar projects. So the members of Task 51 have collected around 40 solar case studies and are about to design a brochure for all of them.