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.
Largest solar thermal plant in Finland
Savosolar has been selected as general contractor to build the largest solar thermal system in Finland to date, on behalf of Etelä Savon Energia Oy for its district heating network, which supplies households with healthy heating. The plant operate as an additional peak load sources during summer season while the main boilers are out of service.
Jelling Varmeværk is a Danish district heating plant in the historical village of Jelling, which is the former home of the Viking Chief Harald Bluetooth. Apart from the 20,125 m² collector field, Jelling Varmeværk produces its energy from a 1 MW wood chip boiler, a 1.5 MW absorption heat pump and 2 gas CHP engines with a total capacity of 8 MW heat and 6 MW electricity.
The first solar system was commissioned in summer 2016 and during its first week of operation, the collector field set a new Danish record by producing nearly 5 kWh/m² in a day.
The collector field in Jelling has double stanchions which allows for two collector rows to connect to one and the same pipe and thereby save costs and thermal losses. The annual solar thermal production is about 11,200 MWh, which covers over 25% of the town’s energy need for heating.
In 2018, Jelling Varmeværk placed a second order with Savosolar for the 4,836 m² extension of the successfully running existing collector field. The extension will be installed in first half of 2019 and it will further grow the fraction of district heating produced with solar energy.
“We chose Savosolar as our collector supplier due to their high efficiency in combination with their innovative solutions. They enable us to have an environmentally friendly, stable and low price for heating over the next 20 years. Collectors have integrated hose connections which means that they disturb the landscape as little as possible in an historic village of Jelling. The collectors can also follow the curvature of the landscape which means that we didn’t have to level out the ground of the field.”
With a size over 13,000 m2, this system is the second largest solar heating system in France and the second largest solar thermal system for industrial process heating in Europe. Savosolar has delivered the largest part of the whole solar thermal plant including the solar collector field, civil work, piping and design and delivery of heat exchange station.
Kyotherm and its affiliate Kyotherm Solar are investment companies which specialize in the third-party financing of renewable heat and energy efficiency projects. Kyotherm Solar is selling heat from this system to a malt drying factory, which is operated by Malteries Franco-Suisses.