Veolia, a global corporation with focus on transport, waste, water and energy built and operate a new district heating network for the city of Voreppe, France.
For this solar installation, the space available for collectors was limited to a structure in midair between two buildings. Having a high solar yield was important criteria. Consequently, Veolia chose the well-designed Savosolar solution and its Savo 15 DG flat plate collectors being the most efficient in the market.
This installation in Voreppe was Savosolar’s first turn-key delivery for district heating in France. It raised interest among the district heating sector showing the potential of solar thermal as a clean heat production.
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 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.
