Turkey

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 18^th of the ICCI Conference and Exhibition, which is organised by Sektörel Fuarcılık, will be held at Istanbul Expo Center from 25 to 27 April 2012. The ICCI 2012 Exhibition and Conference will present a general outlook on the energy sector worldwide and in Turkey.

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

The Turkish solar technologies sector is meeting for the 4th time at the International Solar & PV Exhibition in Istanbul in April 2012. The Fair is a trade platform for domestic and international customers. The exhibitor profile includes conventional, non conventional, renewable and clean and green energy, power transmission, distribution and conservation systems, process automation and instrumentation, boilers and steam systems, material handling systems, waste management systems, environment monitoring, petrochemical & electrical engineering etc.

The Turkish Ministry of Economy has introduced a new calculation method for import taxes and the VAT on imported vacuum tubes. The ’Protection and Inspection Tax’ (Korunma ve Gözetim Vergisi) was made official in the ‘Public Gazette’ and has been in place since 6 July 2011. The new regulation assumes the price of a vacuum tube to be at 6 USD/kg, even if the real price is much lower. The import tax of 1.9 % and 18 % VAT are both calculated based on this assumed price. With an estimated weight of 1.6 kg per tube, import tax and VAT add up to USD 1.9 per tube. That means that the new regulation significantly increases the price of a vacuum tube, which is said to cost between two and three US dollars.

The early bird registration for the European Solar Thermal Energy Conference (estec 2011) has been extended to 15 July. You can save around EUR 100 if you sign up for the 2-day conference before this date. It will take place in Marseilles, France, on 20 and 21 October 2011. Fees are lower for members of the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF) or the French Solar Association ENERPLAN.
Photo: ESTIF

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.

The ISOL Navigator has been launched at the Intersolar Europe in Munich at the 8th of June. The international study presents the current and future market development in 16 key solar heating and cooling countries. The ISOL Navigator is based on the “ISOL Index”, an international business climate index developed by German agency solrico at the beginning of 2010. This ISOL index is a point-based indicator (ranging from 0 to 100 points) showing the satisfaction of solar thermal manufacturers and system suppliers with current and expected market development. Company values are averaged to obtain country and regional indices.
Figure: solrico

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

The ISH is becoming increasingly international. At the beginning of this March, the world´s largest trade fair for bathroom, building, energy and climate technology in Frankfurt, Germany, has counted significantly more international visitors than ever before. 35 % of the 204,000 trade visitors came from abroad (2009: 29 %), whereas the total number of visitors almost stagnated (+1.5 %). The ISH is the trade fair of the European heating industry. The five largest corporations - Bosch Thermotechnik, Vaillant, Viessmann from Germany, BDR Thermea, Netherlands, and Ariston from Italy - dominated Hall 8 with huge stands. Solarthermalworld.org presents some of the trends it discovered in the solar thermal product portfolio of Europe's heating business.
Photo: ISH 2011