District heating

Oulun Seudun Sähkö

Savosolar delivered -once again- the largest solar thermal installation in Finland. This system is located way North in Tupos, Liminka - less than 200 km from the Arctic Circle.

The heating load of Tupos district heating is usually covered by wood pellets. Yet during summer time, the load is often so low, that the substantial wood pellet burner cannot be properly used and an oil burner got used, instead. The special challenge here has been to design a very efficient solar thermal system that could replace the oil consumption in summer to run the district heating network almost completely fossil-free.

Location

Finland

Construction status

Finished

Installation year

2018

Solution type

District heating

Number of collectors

Collector Area

356 m2
, gross

Collector Type

Savo 15 SG

Power

249 kW

Energy production

Onnelanpolku

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.

Lübeck

Under construction

Lübeck, Germany (largest solar thermal plant in Schleswig-Holstein federal state)

Summa Energy has been selected as general contractor to build a 9 MW solar thermal system on behalf of Stadtwerke Lübeck Energie GmbH for its district heating network, which supplies households in the Moisling city district with healthy heating. Only 788 pieces of Savo 16S large scale high performance flat plate collectors are sufficient to getting combined with an 3,000 m³ heat storage tank and produce carbon free heat for the needs of all connected consumers.
Additionally, a PV system will be built on site to generate the electricity consumed by the solar pumps, thus unburdening the local power grid.
The scope of supply includes also all the land works, the construction of a technical building and the supervision system to operate the plant in automatic mode.

Consti Talotekniikka

Swimming halls are very well suited for solar thermal production. Typically, their heat consumption is big and the required temperature level tends to be relatively low. In such cases solar thermal collectors are operating with a very high efficiency.

However, quite often swimming halls are closed some time of the year and summertime closure may mean extra challenges for solar heat supply.

For Hämeenlinna swimming hall Savosolar solved this issue by feeding surplus solar energy in summer to the nearby district heating network. Thus, the solar system is producing heat all days and depending on the swimming hall’s actual heat demand, the facility is either a district heating provider or a consumer.