The solar thermal plant of Verdun will supply 8 GWh of decarbonized heat for the Lacto Serum factory nearby. With an area close to 15,000 m2, it became the largest solar thermal installation for industrial process heat in Europe, exceeding Issoudun’s plant, commissioned in 2021 by Savosolar, with a few hundreds m2.
This plant is the property of Newheat and Savosolar has been chosen to realize the solar thermal field as a turnkey project.
Onnelanpolku nursing home, which was built in 2013, is a so-called near zero energy building. To achieve this classification, the building needs to be well insulated and some of the consumed energy needs to be produced locally. A hybrid heating system for DHW and space heating was realized with the combination of solar thermal collectors and district heating.
Savosolar delivered 240 m² of collector area, which is used to cover 20–30% of the total thermal energy need of the building.
Lolland forsyning’s district heating plant in Søllested is located on the island of Lolland and was the first installation, where Savosolar’s double glazed collectors were used. The double glazing reduces heat losses through the glass side of collector and offers a higher efficiency, especially at higher operation temperature levels and during the darker months of the year. Søllested district heating plant has ca. 500 customers and also uses a 5 MW straw boiler and an oil burner to produce its heat.
The collector field in Søllested has a so-called hybrid field, with both single and double glazed collectors. The single glazed collectors are in the cold end of the collector rows and increase the low temperature as rapidly as possible, while the double glazed collectors are located in the warm side of the collector rows where it is more important to reduce the heat losses.
In Søllested, Savosolar was faced with a special challenge since the customer’s land has a sewerage pipe running through it. Since the owner of the sewer pipe needs to be able to access it in case of maintenance, Savosolar supplied a collector field which both optimised the use of the available land, while still providing access to the sewer pipe
A Finnish district heating company Elenia Lämpö Oy invested in Savosolar solar thermal system to produce CO2-free energy for their customer, which in this case is a nursing home located in Hämeenlinna. The heat is used for domestic hot water and pool heating.
The installation is the biggest operational solar thermal system in Finland.