Solar Cooling

July 15, 2019
A new solar cooling standard for Australia

On 28 June, Standards Australia’s Committee CS-028 on Solar Water Heaters published its first standard on solar air conditioning, named AS 5389. It contains a methodology to calculate the cooling or heating loads of buildings under a variety of climatic conditions. Work on the document...
June 26, 2019
Attractive solar cooling market in Italy

In 2018, Italy was an attractive market for solar cooling solutions thanks to high investment subsidies by national support programme Conto Termico 2.0. Three sorption chiller manufacturers launched projects in the country last year: Maya, an Italian joint-venture with the Japanese company...
May 31, 2019
Solar Cooling at Intersolar 2019

This year’s Intersolar Europe, which took place in Munich, featured a conference session titled Solar, the new cool? Among the speakers at this solar cooling event, held on 15 May, were Daniel Mugnier and Uli Jakob, former members of the IEA SHC research platform New Generation...
March 1, 2019
#SolarHeat: the main Twitter hashtag

#SolarThermal or #SolarHeat: Which of these two Twitter hashtags or keywords better represents the production of thermal energy from sunlight? Because of some recent, large concentrating solar power (CSP) projects, the term solar thermal seems to be in frequent use on social...
January 24, 2019
Solar air conditioning at Swiss embassy in India

The Swiss embassy in New Delhi has expressed satisfaction with the performance of the solar thermal cooling system started up at the complex in early 2017. It was designed and installed by the German-Indian joint venture VSM Solar following an international invitation to tender. It includes...
January 6, 2019
Triple-absorption chiller by Chinese Broad Group

China-based Broad Group has developed a triple-effect absorption chiller that can produce chilled water down to 5 °C, while requiring a lower inlet temperature of about 75 °C leading to a return flow temperature of 55 °C. The new chiller generation has been on the market since 2016 and was...
January 4, 2019
Solar air-conditioning training for energy professionals

Around 40 attendees from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe benefitted from a three-day training course on Solar Cooling and Air Conditioning at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, late last November. The course, aimed at solar energy professionals,...
December 4, 2018
Solar thermal cooling and hot water at hotel in California

US-based company Energy Concepts has been offering absorption chillers for more than 20 years. In 1996, it installed its first commercial ammonia absorption chiller in Kotzebue, Alaska, and that unit is still in use today, during the salmon season in summer. In August 2016, it started up a...
November 6, 2018
ISEC 2018: Working 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. Organiser AEE INTEC had put together a programme...
November 5, 2018
Israeli firm offers large variety of PVT systems

Homes, hospitals, hotels, industrial facilities and greenhouses (see photo): These are some of the many uses for turnkey PV systems produced by Millennium Solar, an Israeli business which was set up in 1999 and specialises in PV-Thermal (PVT) technologies. Founder and Managing Director Ami...
October 25, 2018
Quality principles for solar air conditioning systems

The latest generation of solar air conditioning systems comes in a vast variety of configurations. As shown in the diagram above, their source of energy is either solar heat or electricity. Some include storage tanks and can provide hot water or space heating in addition to space cooling....
October 5, 2018
Solar air heating and cooling system with four new components

New Zealand-based Sojol has designed a prototype of a solar air heating and cooling system which consists of a glazed solar air collector, a heat exchanger and a newly developed helical fan and delivers air at a desired temperature and an optimised flow rate and pressure level.