“Huge innovative potential for solar air conditioning”
Submitted by Baerbel Epp on October 2, 2018
- a significant increase in the efficiency of large solar thermal cooling systems and a simultaneous drop in investment costs
- successful R&D efforts, which had led to optimised small-scale hybrid systems for cooling, domestic hot water and (pre-)heating
|
United World College, Singapore |
Desert Mountain High School, Arizona, USA |
Hospital in Managua, Nicaragua |
Ikea Alexandra, Singapore |
Unit of measure |
Commissioned in |
2011 |
2014 |
2017 |
2017 |
|
Collector area |
3,872 |
4,935 |
4,450 |
2,472 |
m2 |
Cooling capacity |
1,475 |
1,750 |
1,023 |
880 |
kW |
Domestic hot water |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Average daily solar irradiation (climate) |
3.8 (tropical rainforest) |
6.7 (desert) |
4.4 (tropical wet and dry) |
3.8 (tropical rainforest) |
kWh/m2/day |
Solar conversion factor (ratio of solar yield to solar irradiation) |
0.28 |
0.32 |
0.4 |
0.38 |
|
Average daily electrical energy efficiency ratio (EERel) for cooling only |
4.8 |
15.6 |
6.9 |
8.9 |
|
Average thermal energy efficiency ratio (EERth) for cooling only |
0.61 |
0.64 |
0.62 |
0.63 |
|
Estimated specific system costs per gross collector area and weighted by the solar conversion factor |
0.75 |
0.62 |
0.23 |
0.23 |
USD in millions per m2 |

Air-conditioned space |
140 m3 |
Maximum cooling power |
2.5 kW |
Installed collector capacity, including DHW production |
3.6 kW |
Total hours of operation |
230 h |
COPth (only cooling) |
0.96 |
COPel (cooling and domestic hot water) |
9.8 |
EERel (only cooling) |
6.8 |
Specifications of freescoo system and monitoring results from August, after 230 hours of operation in Lampedusa
Source: University of Palermo
A report about a possible breakthrough in cutting the cost of heat-driven cooling technologies came from Henk de Beijer, Managing Director of Solabcool, Netherlands. He said that his company had sold air-cooled chillers providing 7 kW of cooling capacity at 1,150 EUR/kW, a seemingly competitive offer when compared to compression cooling. According to de Beijer, Solabcool had been able to cut costs by increasing cooling output and simplifying the manufacturing process.


