What is Solar Thermal Low Carbon Heating ?
Why is the European Commission driving this?
The EU is planning to mass deploy solar thermal low-carbon heating because it can be deployed quickly into existing and new residential and commercial buildings. It can operate both high-temperature and low-temperature heating systems. It does not burden the grid and removes loading on it. It even helps heat pumps, which struggle to maintain efficiency, making energy bills soar when the air temperature drops. Heat Pump solutions can be lower-cost capital projects with significant reductions in running costs.
Next Generation Solar Thermal increases COP when the weather is cold and frosty, just when you need the most heat energy.
Heating and cooling account for 85% of total final energy use in European households. The majority is used in space heating for residential and commercial buildings and providing hot water. Therefore, The building sector remains the main challenge in decarbonising the H&C sector for the European Commission.
The EU Solar Energy Strategy stresses the need to triple the current level of heat generation capacity from solar thermal by 2030, which equates to surpassing 110 GWth of solar heat in Europe, stated Costas Travasaros, President of Solar Heat Europe.
So, I think the European Commission’s REPowerEU proposal goes in the right direction. This is in line with the Parliament’s call for more ambition on renewable energies, with a new 45% target and also more energy efficiency. I think that the EU’s solar industry alliance should aim to expand the domestic production of solar power, and also integrate solar thermal. If we can at least triple, or make it four times by 2030, I think this would be the right direction for solar thermal, stated Nicolás González Casares, a Spanish MEP from the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group in the European Parliament. He is shadow rapporteur for the revised Renewable Energy Directive.
The chart below from ReHeat Europe shows the annual SPF (annual COP) of Solar Thermal is 60 versus 3 for Heat Pumps, which means you get 20 times more free renewable energy performance as a general performance. Still, like every technology area, there are high-performance categories. Next Generation Solar Thermal, like HONE, is a premium high-performance technology. HONE TE solutions use panels that make both thermal energy and electricity at the same time (HP PVT) and are perfect for Heat Pump integration solutions.
How do I install it? You place the HONE system between your existing boiler/heat pump/stove/etc. and your heating distribution system (radiators/underfloor/etc), and nature does the rest. It doesn’t matter if you have old radiators, underfloor heating or even radiators from the 1800’s.
This is called hybrid heating; you can keep your current heating and hot water boiler (or whatever that is), and the HONE system will suppress its requirement with free renewable heat, especially when you have frosty cold weather. You can also add an extra electric boiler that can run in “dual” hybrid mode using your free renewable electricity. It could not be easier.
This LIVE screenshot below of a HONE Next Generation Solar Thermal Central Heating system on Jan 18th in freezing frosty temperatures of minus eight which was heating this 600-year-old home all day with only daylight as fuel. The system recorded production temperatures of up to 104C whilst delivering heat to the radiators at 55C. The COP was recorded as 1:339, over 100 times more efficient than a heat pump in the same conditions with a thermal output equivalent to a non-stop 16.3 KW oil boiler.
What does a HONE Central Heating System look like ?
This system above is a typical retrofit next-generation solar thermal heating system on a residential project. The top row of panels are the HONE Thermal/Electric system connected to the central heating radiators and hot water system. The bottom two rows are HONE 3D renewable electricity panels. The data for this property today, 18th January 2024, is below, both thermal performance and electricity performance, as this house, like any well-designed renewable energy solution, has both renewable heating and renewable electricity.
The next-generation solar thermal system screenshot at 1:11 pm above delivered heat to the radiators all day, even though it was only the 18th of January. The COP at the time of the screenshot was 1:116, which is 38 times more efficient than a heat pump. This was equivalent to having an oil or gas boiler running non-stop at 5.6 KW output all day. The home is a 2006 constructed retrofit project.
The data above is end-of-day renewable electricity for today, 18th Jan 2024, at the same location, and 47 kWh of free electricity was produced over the day; this is nearly five days’ worth of self-generated renewable electricity. This was stored in the home’s renewable battery system, and approximately 15 kWh was used at night to power the 4 KW electric boiler to maintain the heating system after dark.
The photo below is of a commercial HONE thermal/electric heating & cooling system at an airport in the Netherlands.
