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.
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
Savosolar has been selected as general contractor to build the largest solar thermal system in Finland to date, on behalf of Suur-Savon Sähkö Oy for its district heating network in Puumala, which supplies households with healthy heating. In this hybrid installation the solar thermal system is producing both, high-temperature heat to district heating supply pipe and also low-temperature heat to improve heat pump plant COP.
Løgumkloster Fjernvarme is a district heating company which annually supplies 35,000 MWh of heat to over 1,500 customers. Heat is produced with a hybrid heating system consisting of a 3 MW pellet boiler, a 1.3 MW hybrid heatpump, a 3 MW absorption heat pump and a solar collector field of 15,300 m2. Additionally, the plant has two gas engines which are capable of producing 7.6 MW of heat and 6 MW of electricity and a 10 MW gas boiler which acts as back-up.
In 2015, Savosolar delivered a 9,700 m2 solar thermal field to Løgumkloster. The second order of 5,600 m2 was delivered and commissioned in the beginning of 2016. The complete field consists of 1030 Savo 15 SG collectors and covers about 20% of the annual thermal energy need of the district heating network. The largest part of the heat demand is covered by the pellet boiler, but Løgumkloster Fjernvarme has plans to change this in the future by extending the solar field and building a large seasonal water storage.
