Schüco International

In Germany, the disparity between the photovoltaic market on the one side and the solar heating and cooling market on the other is increasing. “Whereas in 2004, the turnover of the PV sector with EUR 1.2 billion was twice as high as the turnover of the solar thermal industry, it rose to ten times the revenues of the solar heating and cooling sector last year,” Joachim Berner, journalist and solar thermal expert, argues in an article in Sonne Wind & Wärme.. In absolute figures: EUR 1.2 billion of solar heating and cooling versus EUR 11 billion of photovoltaics.
Figure: Schüco

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

Solar cooling for an office building in Kordin, Malta: The Chillii Solar Cooling Kit PSC10 uses 30.5 m² flat plate and 7 m² of vacuum tube collectors to generate 10 kW of cold in an ammonia/water absorption chiller. Photo: Solarnext

The crises of the financial markets did not seem to harm the speedy growth of the solar thermal market in Germany. Industry insiders at the conference Forum Solarpraxis in Berlin on the 20^th/21^st November agreed that the collector area installed in Germany will reach 1.7 to 1.9 million m² (1.2 to 1.3 GW). This is almost a doubling of the 2007 market volume of 950,000 m² (665 MW).