Heroes of the Environment – one of our’s

Congratulations to Samsø Green Island pioneer Søren Hermansen. He’s one of the “Heroes of the Environment 2008″ by Times Magazine. Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841782_1841789,00.html.

One of the achievements are the central solar heating plan in Nordby. The solar plant of 2,500 m² solar collector supporting a chip wood plant with a 800 m³ thermal storage. You find more information on the plant and all the many other efforts on the Green Island at http://www.energiakademiet.dk/front_uk.asp?id=73.

Congratulation to the whole community of Samsø – well done.

Waw – A new world champion on it’s way in South Korea

According to the Danish Engineering Newspaper “Ingeniøren”, the Danish consultancy firm behind most of the Danish CSPH, Rambøll, is on it way with a new plant in South Korea. Source: http://ing.dk/artikel/91267?nyhedsbrev.

The plant will support 100 green houses by a panel area of between 200,000 and 500,000 m², reducing the CO₂ emission by approx. 100,000-200,000 tons a year.

The plant will involve heat pumps and heat storage.

Europa seems to wake up

I found the following conference paper abstract that seems to point out that European activities on Central Solar Heating seems to wake up. http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/cpl/record/index.xsql?pubid=64021

It will be interesting to follow this European Platform:

http://esttp.org/cms/front_content.php

I will try to follow up on it.

Renewable combination power plant

The Kassel University in Germany did a study on combining renewable energy sources for 100% power supply. The homepage is to be found at http://www.kombikraftwerk.de/index.php?id=27. The week point in the scenario is the lack of heat production that is strongly interact with the power production, also for a renewable power plant. I would recommend that the University in Kassel, utilized their own expertise from Prof. Klaus Vajen, an expert in solar heating, also large-scale.

The point of the study is, that it can be shown that the whole of Germany can be supplied with renewable energy. A simple statement, that lead me to the below memory:

Just to mention, similar scenario where made in the 80′th for the Nordic countries by among others the Technical University of Denmark, Niels I. Meyer.

Ikea active in large-scale heat storage technology

Ikea applies heat pump with bore hole storage for heating. The goal is to supply 100% of the heat demand by renewable energy sources by 2012. The plant in Karlstad, Sweden, coveres 85 procent of the heat demand for the 24,000 m² warehouse by the heat pump storage system. Additional systems are planned in Malmö, Uppsala and Helsingborg.

Ikea’s bore hole storage in Karlstad, Sweden (Foto: Ikea)

The system consists of 101 bore holes with a distance of 5.5 m and a depth of 120 m, sizing the capcity of 1,200 kW. In winter electrical heating is necessary to meet the demands. The system has an impact of 2,200 CO2-reduction.

These storage types are developed for district heating in combination with solar heating, recovering the storage with solar energy during summer.

Source: http://ing.dk/artikel/85149?nyhedsbrev

Simple search on cshp in Goolge – Find new sources of knowledge

By the simple keywords “cshp” and “+solar” you find the most important links to online resources on large-scale solar heating. Her you get the Google query.

Evaluation of Test Method for Large Solar Collector Efficiency

The Technical University of Denmark does research in large-scale solar collectors.

Abstract from DTU-homepage regarding the conference publication:

The test method of the standard EN12975-2 (European Committee for Standardization, 2004) is used by European test laboratories to determine the efficiency of solar collectors. In the test methods the mean solar collector fluid temperature in the solar collector, Tm is determined by the approximated equation where Tin is the inlet temperature to the collector and Tout is the outlet temperature from the collector. The specific heat of the solar collector fluid is in the test method as an approximation determined as a constant equal to the specific heat of the solar collector fluid at the temperature Tm. The power produced by the solar collector during a test period is determined by the product of the specific heat, the mass flow rate and the temperature increase of the solar collector fluid. The solar collector efficiency is in the standard determined by measurements at different temperature levels. Based on these efficiencies, an efficiency equation is determined by regression analysis. In the test method, there are no requirements on the ambient air temperature and the sky temperature. The paper will present an evaluation of the test method for a 12.5 m² flat plate solar collector panel from Arcon Solvarme A/S. The solar collector panel investigated has 16 parallel connected horizontal absorber fins. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations, calculations with a solar collector simulation program SOLEFF (Rasmussen and Svendsen, 1996) and thermal experiments are carried out in the investigation. The investigations elucidate: • How the mean solar collector fluid temperature Tm is underestimated by the approximated equation in the test standard and how the collector efficiency equation is influenced by the underestimation of Tm. The dependence of the volume flow rate is shown; • How the use of the approximated specific heat of the solar collector fluid is influencing the collector efficiency expression; • How the temperature levels used is influencing the collector efficiency expression; • How the measured collector efficiency is influenced by the weather conditions such as the ambient air temperature and the sky temperature. Based on the investigations, recommendations for change of the test methods and test conditions are considered. The investigations are carried out within the NEGST (New Generation of Solar Thermal Systems) project financed by EU.

Big players are waking up in Denmark

For the first time, a major district heating company is planing to adopt the concept of central solar heating. The company VEKS, distributing heat in the western part of the Copenhagen area is aiming at a CSHP with a solar collector size of 20,000 m2, placed along a main highway. The plant will match the current record of the Marstal plant, also placed in Denmark. The plant will deliver approx. the heat of 5-6,000 single family houses.CEO, Lars Gulev, of the “Vestegnens Kraftvarmeselskab” district heating company estimates the plant to produce 10 GWh heat to the district heating system. The goal is to get the plant into production before the International Climate Conference in Copenhagen, 2009, where the expectations are to replace the Kyoto-protocol with a more ambitious protocol.

It is expected that the application of central solar heating is a factor 4 more cost efficient compare to single family housing solar installations.

Relevant is to mention, that the company is expecting lower production prices for the solar plant compared to the traditional co-generation plants due to the facts that solar prices are reduced as conventional heating prices are increased during the later years.

“In the first place, the solar heating plant is planed due to commercial reasons. Getting reduced CO2 pollution is a environmental side effect.” says Lars Gulev.

We hope others will take this considerations up and CSHP will play a more dominant role in the future of district heating. It would be interesting to see, if surplus heat from the power production will be cooled into the see due to this investment.

You find information on VEKS’s homepage on http://www.veks.dk (in Danish), where you change to English and will be presented for general information on the district heating system of Copenhagen. The solar plant is presented at the location http://www.veks.dk/Artikler/Seneste%20nyt/Solvarme.aspx

Brænderstrup CSHP

The Danish Engineering Newspaper did present the following news about a new very large CSHP plant:

Place: Denmark, Brænderup (near Horsens), at the mainland.

Size: 8.000 m² solar collector field, sized to deliver 10% of the district heating demand.

Of the 13 million total cost, the 3.5 millioner DDK are funded by a public body, Energinet.dk, that last year did analyse solar and district heating lead to positiv economical results. This analysis pointed out that this is due to the fact that the heat- or power plant can be turned of for some periods, where the price for power is too low to produce.
The maximum effect is estimated to 6 MW heat, with an annual production of approx. 4,000 MWh heat, leading to a yearly emission reduction of 4,300 tons CO2. The plant is designed by consultant company Planenergi and Ramboll, Denmark with Arcon solar collector producer, the same companies as involved in most of the plants in Denmark.

IEA and energy storage

The IEA – International Energy Agency – has been working on energy storage for years. You find the activities at a dedicated homepage for the Energy Conservation through Energy Storage (ECES) group at www.iea-eces.org. You find historical data on finalized energy storage projects but more important the tasks, called annexes, that are active.
Annex 15 Distributed Generation and Electrical Energy Storage (still pending)
Annex 16 Deployment of Energy Storage(PCM and UTES) 2006-2007 (planned)
Annex 18 Transportation of Thermal Energy by TES 2006-2009 (planned)
Annex 19 Optimized Industrial ProcessHeatand Power Generation by TES 2006-2008 (planned)
Annex 20 Sustainable Cooling by TES 2006-2007

It seems that things are going very slow and under planing. Could we please do better?