multi-family buildings

December 3, 2018
California between PV mandate and buildings ready for solar heat

This year, California´s energy policy has been clearly focused on pushing PV. As recently as September, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill committing the Golden State to zero-carbon electricity supply by 2045. Likewise, revised Building Energy Efficiency Standards, which the California...
August 14, 2018
Concrete slabs store thermal energy and heat homes

Many building owners consider roof-integrated solar systems to be a tried-and-true way of saving as much on their heating bills as they can. A research project called solSPONGEhigh and developed in Austria has shown: When using thermal mass, i.e., the capacity of a building to store heat in...
May 25, 2018
California Solar Initiative dominated by multi-family houses

In 2017, the California Solar Initiative (CSI) – Thermal Program supported the installation of 20,000 m² of collector area, a 20 % increase over the prior year. With 10,832 m², or four times the area installed in 2016, multi-family buildings dominated the subsidy landscape for those 12...
January 10, 2018
French SOCOL network analyses market drivers and barriers

The SOCOL network has become more involved than ever in shaping the future of the French solar thermal sector, having grown quickly from just 155 experts in 2013 to 2,500...
December 13, 2017
Sun provides 70 % of hot water in blocks of flats

More than 3,500 solar water heating systems have been in operation at blocks of flats across Brazil’s ‘solar city’ Belo Horizonte. This figure, an estimate by organisations which were previously part...
October 3, 2017
Switzerland: Strong Heat Pump and PV Competition

There couldn’t be a starker contrast between the market development of two renewable heat segments: Whereas Swiss heat pump sales remained at around 18,400 units per year from 2014 to 2016, collector sales dropped significantly from 117,634 m² in 2014 to 66,699 m² last year. Market volume...
October 20, 2016
Bulgaria: Third Phase of Residential Energy Efficiency Credit Line Launched

Although Bulgaria is a country with many green or mountainous areas, it has had to grapple with severe air pollution caused not only by old cars, but also by wood-fuelled heating systems, which are popular across the country. The European Environment Agency has recently rated the Bulgarian...
May 31, 2016
Israel: Winter Hail Storm Boosts Replacement Rate

Last year, the Israeli market saw a significant increase in newly installed glazed collector area, showing a total of 428,750 m² or a 9 % increase compared to the previous year. Eli Shilton, Managing Director of Israeli solar thermal system supplier Elsol, believes that a hail storm last...
November 3, 2015
France: Industry Does Not Yet Surrender

The one-day workshop of the French solar sector to discuss the General State of Solar Heat in 2015 (États Généraux de la Chaleur Solaire 2015) took place in Nantes on 20 October with around 130 participants. The market is still...
September 21, 2015
Switzerland: Shift towards Multi-Family Housing Projects

In June, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy published its annual solar market report carried out by the solar energy association Swissolar (see the attached document in German and French). In 2014, sales of glazed collectors dropped by 7 %, down to 113,000 m² of absorber area. Vacuum tube...
August 11, 2015
Germany: Solar Heat Costs Less than Oil and Gas in Multi-Family Buildings

Solar thermal is economically viable in Germany in multi-family buildings – that is the clear message of the Excel-based tool which German solar thermal system supplier Remeha, a brand of the BDR Thermea Group, uses to calculate solar water heater performance at multi-family dwellings. The...
June 30, 2015
Austria: 1,500 m² ESCO Project for Vienna Residential Area

Austrian heat supplier Energiecomfort is expanding its solar heat services: The company based in Vienna, the capital of Austria, services around 5,000 m² of collector area for 50 different multi-family building projects across the Vienna area. Over the coming weeks, a 1,500 m² collector...