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An open source database to support investment in solar thermal technologies through improved transparency on costs and heat prices in buildings and industry.
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Facades of residential and tertiary buildings offer enough space for daylight control and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems. Active envelope solutions include facade-integrated solar thermal collectors, PV panels, daylight control systems or panels containing ventilation units with heat recovery and/or a heat pump with all necessary connectors. Optimising their performance and building integration has been one of the main objectives of an international research programme called Building Integrated Solar Envelope Systems for HVAC and Lighting, also known as Task 56 of the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme. The photo shows the around 20 task experts who met at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, on 21–22 September.
The one presenting Dutch-based BDR Thermea’s solar heating solutions at the Solar Show Africa 2017 in late March in South Africa was Fabrisolia, the new solar thermal centre of excellence created by the company group. It consists of a factory for collector panel assembly and a solar thermal R&D centre and is located in Castellbisbal near Barcelona. 
In the Netherlands, solar district heating plants with a capacity of 140 kWth or above can benefit from a feed-in tariff scheme called SDE+, which pays a certain amount per kWh of energy. Under the scheme, operators of renewable energy plants can apply for a subsidy to bridge the gap between market price and cost of energy production. Consequently, interest was high when a workshop about solar district heating (SDH) took place in mid-April 2017. It attracted around 50 people from the district heating and the solar thermal industry, consulting businesses and the government. Organised jointly by Dutch district heating organisation Warmtenetwerk, Holland Solar and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO.nl, the workshop featured a presentation on SDH in Denmark – held by Jan Erik Nielsen from PlanEnergi and based on results from Task 45 and 55 of the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme – and provided information about the national subsidy scheme, thermal storage technologies as well as the only DH plant in operation in the Netherlands to date.
The biggest challenge for a small market like the solar cooling one – which has still a long way to go – is how to reduce system costs. One way to achieve this objective besides increasing market volume is standardisation. Companies from around the globe have responded to the challenge by developing pre-engineered solar cooling kits. To provide a better overview of the innovative technologies in this field, the researchers of IEA SHC Task 53, New Generation Solar Cooling and Heating Systems, collected technical data on 10 small to medium solar cooling units and published them in table form (see the attached document). The list includes market-ready as well as close-to-market solutions.
