Large scale solar water heating

Solar water heating panels can be used in small scale for single-family houses and in large scale for block and district heating.

Ramboll, has been involved in the research and development of the newest technologies, including underground seasonal storage as well as the planning and design of all the largest plants in Denmark and Sweden. The cost of solar water heating from large plants is between 15% and 25% less that the heat costs from small solar heating plants. These large plants are now competitive with natural gas boilers in Denmark.

We expect the demand for large-scale solar heating plants to grow in countries with warm climates, centralised heat supply and a progressive climate change policy.

Today, Denmark has several large solar heating plants between 10,000 and 18,000 m2 and several large plants are in the pipeline. Ramboll’s study ‘Heath Plan Denmark’ anticipates that all district heating systems which do not already have a surplus of energy (which will otherwise be wasted) in the summer months will invest in large scale solar heating.

Solar heating cannot yet compete with the surplus heat from waste to energy and biogas CHP plants, which can only be stored for short periods of time. Depending on the available resources of this kind of surplus heat and the development of the heating and cooling market we expect that Denmark before 2020 will have more than 100 large scale solar heating plants, with in total 4 mio. m2. In Heat Plan Denmark 2010 we foresee a total potential of 8 mio. m2 in 2030 

More info at the Ramboll profile and

http://blog.ramboll.com/urbanenergysolutions/