Denmark

Since July, the world’s biggest solar thermal plant has gradually come into operation. It produces heat for a women’s university in Saudi Arabia, the Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University inaugurated at the end of 2011. From July onwards, students and staff have been moving onto the campus and with heat demand increasing, the covers have been removed one by one from the six solar fields. The photo shows the collector field on a warehouse – the buildings in the background all belong to the university.
Photo: AEE Intec

Shaking hands with arms crossed: The former owner of BATEC Solar, Emanuel Brender (middle), will continue to support the Danish company’s new owners Lars Sabroe Thomsen (left) and Michael Junge. A respective purchase contract was signed in August 2011.

The Third Annual Conference of the European Technology Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling will take place from 26 to 27 April in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 2008 all major European stakeholders from the biomass, geothermal and solar thermal sectors – including the related cross-cutting industries – have come together in the European Technology Platform on Renewable Heating & Cooling (RHC-Platform) to define a common strategy for increasing the use of renewable energy technologies for heating and cooling.

The 'SDHtake-off - Solar District Heating in Europe' project is a EU-funded project (under the European Commission Programme IEE Intelligent Energy Europe)supporting the market rollout of solar district heating in Europe. It started on July 2009 and runs for a period of three years. This document is one of its deliverables, describing the development of SDH capacities in Europe as a result of the existing policies and incentives.

On 29 and 30 September, the project partners of the EU project SDHtake-off met for a workshop during the GeoThermExpo in Ferrara, Italy. “All the big players in district heating in Italy joined our meeting,” project coordinator Thomas Pauschinger from German research centre Solites says. He sees that as an indicator for the growing interest of the district heating industry in solar thermal applications. The Italian town Serrazzano (Photo) might soon have a solar district heating system.
Photo: Geo Energy Service

The Trainenergy project ran from September 2009 to September 2011, with the objective to produce a training programme about the EU Energy Performance of Building and the Energy End-Use Efficiency and Energy Services Directives for tradesmen in the construction industry. The project was run in Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Denmark. This module presents the best renewable sources that offer heating at virtually zero carbon emissions, solar water heating being the first technology to be assessed.

Canadian air collector manufacturer Enerconcept uses Danish know-how for the industrial version of its Luba collectors. On 1 July, CEO Christian Vachon (left) entered into an agreement with the owner of Danish company Solarventi, Hans Jørgen Christensen, allowing Enerconcept to use an air collector patent of the Scandinavians. The innovative technology has already been implemented in a major project in Quebec City.
Photo: Stephanie Banse

Solar heat is penetrating Denmark’s district heating networks at an unprecedented rate: Around 90,000m² of collector area (63 MW_th) are going to be connected to the country’s networks in 2011. The map shows the existing and planned solar district heating systems in Denmark, including the installed or planned collector area. The Danish consulting and engineering company PlanEnergi was responsible of drafting the map in the framework of Task 45 “Large Solar Heating/Cooling Systems, Seasonal Storage, Heat Pumps”. The task was started in January 2011 by the International Energy Agency’s Solar Heating and Cooling Programme (IEA SHC), which will run until December 2013.
Source: PlanEnergi

Dr. Alexander Zhivov of the US Army Corps of Engineers presented the recently developed US Army Guide on Central Solar Water Heating Systems at the Intersolar North America conference in the middle of July 2011 (see attached presentation). The speaker is Senior Principal Investigator at the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) of the US Army and Project Manager of the Solar Guide. The 321-page study analyses the potential and technical feasibility of domestic hot water production in US Army facilities, such as barracks, dining facilities, hospitals or gyms.
Photo: US Army