State-owned Azerenergy Construction Company (AZENCO), which is based in Azerbaijan in the Caucasian region, started producing solar thermal collectors at the beginning of August and will very soon produce solar tanks, too. The investment was initiated by a state programme, which aims at installing solar heating systems in public buildings.
This paper was created by M. Lopes Prates, J. Cruz Costa, J. Farinha Mendes, and Maria João Carvalho of Portugal’s Department of Renewable Energies at INETI, the National Institute of Engineering and Industrial Technology. The focus of this paper is on the legislative and regulatory frameworks of the Portuguese government, pertaining to solar thermal technology, and their effect on the industry and its market.
The REMAP Project (Action Plan for High Priority Renewable Energy Initiatives in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Area) is a two years initiative funded under the European Commission FP6 with the goal of investigating two electricity generation technologies: wind power and concentrated solar power, in nine European and Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Jordan, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey).
Pressing the red button: The SolarThermal Competence Centre (STCC) of German machinery supplier Minitec GmbH & Co. KG was inaugurated at the end of August by Margit Conrad, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Consumer Protection of the Federal State of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Centre demonstrates the standardized and streamlined serial production of high-quality collectors.
Pressing the red button: The SolarThermal Competence Centre (STCC) of German machinery supplier Minitec GmbH & Co. KG was inaugurated at the end of August by Margit Conrad, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Consumer Protection of the Federal State of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Centre demonstrates the standardized and streamlined serial production of high-quality collectors.
A major order for two Austrian companies was announced at a press conference in the middle of August: Austrian engineering company Solid - represented by its two CEOs Christian Holter (middle) and Franz Radovic (right) - signed a contract with the United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) to deliver, install and operate a solar heating and cooling installation with 3,900 m2 of collector area in Singapore. The Raiffeisen-Landesbank of Steiermark (RLB-Stmk) will be responsible for financing the investment of around EUR 4 million together with the OeKB, the Oesterreichische Kontrollbank.
Photo: Solid
A satisfying record: The Indian city of Rajkot in Gujarat state, Western India, has seen the installation of more than 16,000 residential systems and over 700 commercial solar water heating systems since the Municipal Corporation implemented a solar building bye-law in March 2004.
Photo: Jaideep Malaviya
The marketing campaign for solar hot water systems in the residential sector in Mexico, Procalsol (2007 to 2012), bore fruit: According to the annual market statistics of the National Association of Solar Energy (ANES), the newly installed collector area in households almost tripled from 53,183 m2 in 2008 to 132,934 m2 last year.
This pamphlet was created by the public-private partnership of the German company MAN Ferrostaal, the German Energy Agency, and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Its focus is on how this public-private partnership brought a solar thermal system to a school in the Middle East, its positive social benefit, and how it is opening doors to the development of the Middle Eastern solar thermal market.
Austrian OEM collector manufacturer Greenonetec runs four robots at its new assembly line for tray collectors supported by seven workers. With a cycle time of around one minute, the highly automated production line is one of the fastest in the world.
Photo: Greenonetec