Germany: Winners of Solarthermalworld.org Research Competition

The winners of the first Solarthermalworld.org Research Video Competition received their awards at the international conference SHC 2013 in Freiburg in September 2013. The first prize – an iPad mini – went to Christine Tillmann, R&D Engineer at the German Institute of Air Handling and Refrigeration, ILK, in Dresden for her video titled “Thermally-driven cold generation – air-cooled absorption chiller”. Daniel Mugnier (centre) from French company Tecsol accepted the prize on behalf of Tillmann, as both researchers cooperate within Task 48 of the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling programme headed by Mugnier. Jan Steinweg (left) from the German Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH) came in second, with the prize being a free conference ticket. Together with his colleague Francis Kliem, they had produced a video explaining in clear words the relevance of “Pipe-internal Re-circulation in Storage Connections”  for tank efficiency and the measures to avoid it.

“We are proud to show research work in the field of solar heating and cooling to an audience beyond the research community which meets at international conferences such as the SHC 2013,” Nigel Cotton explains. Cotton is Programme Director at the European Copper Institute (ECI) and initiator of the first research video competition (right on the photo above). “We know that research work of high value is often invisible due to constraints on conference time and costs, both when organising and attending these events.” With this in mind, solarthermalworld.org organised the first Video Research Competition: Researchers were asked to send an up to 3-minute video or animation explaining in brief the objectives and findings of their current solar thermal research project until 10 September. All videos are still available on the YouTube channel solarthermalResearch and on the solarthermalworld.org website.

A jury made up of representatives from the ECI, the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF), Kellen Europe and solrico chose the winners based on the following criteria:

• Clear and concise message
• Creativity of the video
• Relevance for future technology and market development
• Most views

Although the competition itself is already over for this year, any research videos which fulfil the above-mentioned criteria can still be sent to solarthermalworld.org (GSTEC@kelleneurope.com) to be uploaded onto the YouTube channel and onto solarthermalworld.org.