The publication of the EU Strategy on Heating and Cooling (Heat Strategy) is now scheduled for February 2016. The Heat Strategy was supposed to be already out on 18 November 2015. The consultation process is now over and the ENER C3 unit of the DG of Energy is drafting the final version. The photos show the two most important heads of European energy strategies: Maroš Šefčovič from Slovakia, Vice-President of the European Commission and in charge of the Energy Union (left), and Miguel Arias Cañete from Spain, the commissioner for Energy and Climate Action.

One key aspect of the energy and cost optimisation of large-scale collector fields is collector array hydraulics. The Austrian institute AEE INTEC developed a set of 11 indicators which can be calculated during the design phase of a plant and allow for a more sophisticated and more economic collector array design. The results were discussed and published as part of Task 45, Large Systems: Large Solar Heating/Cooling Systems, Seasonal Storage, Heat Pumps, of the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme in a two-page info leaflet and a 44-page technical document.

Cooling demand is growing worldwide and has already resulted in more than 125 million electricity-driven split chiller units installed in residential and commercial buildings each year. Danish company Purix aims at exactly this growing market segment with a green solution. “We offer plug & play solar cooling systems, either of mono- or multi-spilt design,” explains Lars Munkøe, Director and co-founder of Purix. The company was established in 2011 as a spin-off initiated by an R&D engineer in cooperation with Danish company Exima, a service provider for corporate responsibility.

The implementation of voluntary collector label Solergy will enter into the second phase in 2016. The European Commission has confirmed that there was no likelihood of confusing the voluntary mark with the official energy labelling stipulated since September 2015 for heating devices across Europe, the Steering Committee of the Solar Heating Initiative said in a letter sent to selected stakeholders in the middle of December.