Central Solar Heating Blog

Solar data online (Danish)

Fred Heller — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:44:59 +0000

You can find measured data from CSHPs online at http://www.solvarmedata.dk for Danish plants. You find daily production data for the plants that can be downloaded for own use. You can also generate plots from these data online.

This is good work and we must hope that others will do similar things – standardizing such processes would even increase the ability to reusing of data. Thanks to the involved!

European solar district heating

Fred Heller — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:04:27 +0000

www.solar-district-heating.eu, the website of the Intelligent Energy Europe ‘SDHtake-off – Solar District Heating in Europe’ project! SDHtake-off is supporting the market rollout of solar district heating in Europe.

The website provides you with updated news and informations on solar district heating as well as project products and services presented here according to the SDHtake-off project progress.

Note that the updates and news are at this point very hot.

New IEA-Task regarding central solar heating

Fred Heller — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:38:19 +0000

After some years of quiet, a new IEA-Task is approved and started.

Task 45: Large Systems: Large Solar Heating and Cooling, Seasonal Storage, Heat Pumps. http://www.iea-shc.org/task45/.

Operating agent is Jan Erik Nielsen from Planerergi, Denmark. The kick-off meeting will be in Barcelona, Spain in April 2011.

Keep an eye on this task.

Large Scale Thermal Storage inspire the overall energy balancing

Fred Heller — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:22:23 +0000

The large-scale solar heating plant in Braendestrup, Denmark, with a collector area of 8,000 m2 is enlarged to between 16,000 and 18,000 m2.

The plant will also get a seasonal storage, designed as a bore hole storage with 100 holes of 25 meters depth. The storage will also be utilized for storing overflow of wind power by applying a heat pump to transform the electrical power into heat. This is certainly not exergetically sound, but the alternative would be to stop the wind mills.

The renewable fraction will be 50% and the investment will be in the order of 3 mill. Euros. The plant will be designed by the German consultant company Solites, the Danish consultant company PlanEnergi and others. The project is supported by Energy Net Denmark.

Original article by Ingeniøren in Danish.

Solar and Geothermal Power Production – An inspiration

Fred Heller — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:13:38 +0000

Under the term GeoThermal the University of Adelaide, Australia, in cooperation with the company Permatherm, does investigating an very inspiring combination of solar thermal power production with geothermal energy. The goals for the project are: “This project aims to reduce the cost of solar thermal energy by 40 per cent through the integration of renewable energy technologies, while also achieving up to 50% renewable energy and true base-load capability…”.

You fin more about this project at http://environmentinstitute.wordpress.com.

Thanks for the inspiration. We ought to look at similar combinations for solar heating.

Energymap online

Fred Heller — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:39:43 +0000

The Danish Industry is running a web system pointing at energy solutions, companies involved, projects, including solar thermal. You can find the map at http://www.energymap.dk. You find the Marstal Central Solar Heating Plant, their contact company and other information on the direct link http://www.energymap.dk/Profiles/Ramboll/Cases/Large-Scale-solar-heating-in-Marstal.

Any Danish owner of a plant or a company is invited to contribute to the common resource. Please do so.

Article on CSHP at Marstal

Fred Heller — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:04:59 +0000

After a mail correspondence, John Perlin, did a great job on presenting the solar plant at Marstal. You may find the blog entry at http://www.miller-mccune.com/news/solar-water-heater-plant-denmark-1437 – Thank you John.

A new huge CSHP in Gram, Denmark

Fred Heller — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:22:19 +0000

Gram Central Solar Heating

A new plant at Gram, Denmark, is to take the lead as the largest of it’s type. Based on all the experiences from the many installations, the first step of the Gram-plant is errected in marts-april 2009 (see picture – more pictures are presented in a Gallery).

The plant is described as follows:

Gram District Heating is expected to supply 17 procent the towns demand in district heating, which is approx. the total demand of 190 single family houses.

In a first fase, 802 solfangere from Arcon Solvarme are mounted in spring 2009. They produce approx. 7 MW yearly results in 4800 MWh and solar fraction of 117%. This leads to a CO2 emission reduction by 1,110 ton.

The expected life time for the installation is estimated to 25, whereas the oldest plant is still running at Saltum since 21 yeras.

The investement of 18 mio. Danish Kroner is expected to bring a pay back time of 7-9 years.

National development subsidies to CSHP in Dronninglund, Denmark

Fred Heller — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:06:07 +0000

Through a research and development support of 11.9 mio. DDK, the Danish government pushes for CSHP with seasonal storage. In charge for the project is Planenergi, the most active consulting company in the business together with the plant owner, Dronningelund District Heating. The overall concept will be to use solar heating in combination with a large scale thermal storage and a heat pump. The collector area is planned to be approx. 35,000 square metres, a storage volume of 60,000 m³ and a heat pump with 3 MW effect.

The seasonal storage is planned as a pit water storage with floating lid, a well-known solution applied in the past.

The overall budget for the project is 80 mio. DDK or approx. 10.1 mio. Euros.

We keep an eye on this project at this blog.80

Online real time production data from Large Scale Solar Heating Plants

Fred Heller — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:38:27 +0000

You are able to follow actual production data from large scale solar heating plants through at homepage. This gives you an idea of the performance for different plants at the same time, in real time . The texts are in Danish – however, the first value shows the actual production in kW, the second value shows the production per area and the third shows the actual solar irradiation.

You find the site at http://www.solvarmedata.dk/.