Ezinc Metal San

This is an interview with Kutay Ülke from the company Ezinç. Ezinç is one of the main collector and storage tank producers in Turkey. Kutay Ülke speaks about the company products and training activities. He also explains the development of the Turkish solar thermal market even if there are no incentives from the government.

The student hostel of the University in Trabzon at the north coast of Turkey enjoys ideal conditions for solar water usage. When the 762 m² collector field was mounted on the roofs of the buildings, the hostel had already been equipped with six 10,000 litre tanks, which could have been used to store solar energy. This made the solar system, which Ezinc - Turkey's biggest collector manufacturer – set up this summer, a very cost-effective installation. Only EUR 120,000 were needed for the collector field, the mounting sets and the installation, translating into a payback time of five years.
Photo: Ezinc

Ezinç Metal, the biggest solar thermal manufacturer in Turkey, has just published a book about the use of solar heating. The 110-page document entitled 'Güneş Enerjisi' describes in Turkish the potential of solar heating, and the different collector and tank technologies Ezinç has been offering. It also includes a chapter on mounting issues, one on additional components such as pumps and expansion vessels, and several hydraulic schemes for smaller and larger systems.

Solar water heaters are gaining importance in Turkey's social housing projects: Over the last years, the country's Housing Development Administration (TOKI) has provided a total of 20,000 flats for low-income families with solar hot water. According to Munik Durak, these projects have, for the most part, been realised at newly constructed blocks of flats consisting of 40 to 50 units (see photo). Furthermore, the director of TOKI´s project department stated that TOKI had installed solar heating systems in 100 hospitals all around the country.
Photo: Ezinç

“Competition on price” was one of the key questions of the panel discussion at the international conference SMEthermal 2011 in Berlin on 10 February. Representatives from the major solar thermal markets worldwide discussed the challenges of the world market among them (left to right): Hakan Alas, General Manager, Ezinç Metal (Turkey), Michael Hsu, CEO, Sunshore Solar Energy – Business Development Central Europe (Austria/China) and Lucio Mesquita, Managing Director, Thermosol Consulting (Canada/Brazil). SMEthermal is an annual one-day conference dedicated exclusively to manufacturing of collectors and tanks, new materials and process optimisation. There were 160 participants from 22 different at the event.
Photo: Solarpraxis AG / Therese Aufschlager

The 1^st SMEThermal in March 2010 exceeded the expectations: As the first of its kind to be dedicated exclusively to materials and equipment used in manufacturing solar thermal tanks and collectors, it attracted 150 key industry players from 20 different countries.
Photo: Solarpraxis

The picture shows the solar shop of Solimpeks and the office building for the engineers of the Seiso subsidiary, which is responsible for large-scale projects. Turkish solar thermal manufacturers increasingly establish separate companies to handle hotel installations or process heat applications. Photo: Ina Röpcke

Jubilee collector on display in the headquarters building: This collector panel completed in December 2009 the total of 3,000,000 m² of produced collector area Turkish manufacturer Ezinc Metal San. has produced since it started production in 1983. Photo: Ezinc

The solar thermal market in Turkey is shrinking. The produced collector area has decreased by an average of 9 % each year since reaching its peak in 2004 with almost 1.5 million m². Local manufacturers only produced 1 million m² last year, according to the statistics of Gunder, the Turkish division of the International Solar Energy Society (see chart below). The association is estimating an additional import rate of 3 to 5 %.