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Newsletter November 2018

Exchanging ideas across technological boundaries

The first International Sustainable Energy Conference, or ISEC for short, was held in October, and it was a roaring success. The three-day gathering of renewable experts in Graz, Austria, was attended by 370 people from 51 countries. “This conference is key to bringing sectors closer together and will help foster new ideas,” Josef Plank, Secretary of State for Sustainability and Tourism in the Austrian government, said in his opening remarks.

Until 2016, AEE INTEC had organised a biennial conference named Gleisdorf Solar, which attracted about 230 attendees the last time round. This year, the organisers put the spotlight on the role of heat and resource efficiency across an interlinked energy system. ISEC 2018 was one of the official events of Austria´s current EU presidency. The growing importance of the topic in the debates about transforming the EU’s energy system is hard to overlook. Photo: Miriam Raneburger

TOP NEWS OF THE MONTH

Salaspils in Latvia plans 15 MW solar district heating project
by Bärbel Epp

The first half of 2019 will mark the launch of a milestone project on solar district heating in Eastern Europe. The utility which serves the Latvian town of Salaspils, near Riga, plans to install 21,672 m² of collector area (15 MW_th) to provide heat for its modernised, efficient district heating network.

Russian scientist unveils polymer air collector
by Eugene Gerden

Yuri Avetisyan, a young Russian scientist at the Don State Technical University, has presented a newly developed air collector. It could be used to heat greenhouses in the agricultural sector or heat and ventilate residential properties. The energy from a photovoltaic panel is used to rotate two fans inside the valves at the inlet and outlet.

A closer look at six Latin American and Caribbean markets
by Marisol Oropeza

Fundación Bariloche, a research institute based in Argentina, has published a report on the differences between the solar thermal markets in Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay. As shown in the chart, the number of conventional and solar water heaters varies greatly from country to country.

IEA SHC NEWS

Israeli firm offers large variety of PVT systems
by Riccardo Battisti

Millennium Solar specialises in PV-Thermal (PVT) technologies. Managing Director Ami Elazari explains the benefits of participating in the Application of PVT Collectors research platform: “We can contribute in-field experience in PVT and learn something new on the R&D side.”

Online database on advanced PCMs
by Bärbel Epp

Compared to water, phase change materials (PCMs) offer more capacity to store heat in tanks. Hence, researchers in all corners of the world have been developing new materials and their properties. To ensure the employment of a shared methodology the IEA SHC Programme has published a glossary and compiled PCM database online.

Quality principles for solar air conditioning systems
by Bärbel Epp

The latest generation of solar air conditioning systems comes in a vast variety of configurations. To support the deployment of standardised, cost-effective installations, researchers in Task 53 have developed a method to assess and benchmark solar cooling systems with capacities between 5 and more than 150 kW.

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