Training of Solar Heating Installers - OPET Sweden

Summary
Solar Thermal has made slow progress on the Swedish market compared to other countries, and also compared to other renewable energy sources in Sweden. Against this background, lack of installers working with Solar Thermal was identified as one of the main barriers. The reason for this was mainly a lack of knowledge amongst the installers, and a quite 'hot' market for the more traditional working areas for installers. In order to get more installers interested, a training course was established in 1999.

End-user area	New buildings Refurbishment of buildings
Target audience	Architects and engineers Other
Technical scope	Heating Solar energy

Context
Solar Thermal has made slow progress on the Swedish market compared to other countries, and also compared to other renewable energy sources in Sweden. Against this background, lack of installers working with Solar Thermal was identified as one of the main barriers. The reason for this was mainly a lack of knowledge amongst the installers, and a quite ‘hot' market for the more traditional working areas for installers. In order to get more installers interested, a training course was established.

Objectives
The aim of the action was mainly to increase the number of installers with knowledge of solar thermal installations. With an increasing market, this group might well be the core group to support the development of the market demand.

One of the main activities in the solar heating work package was the training course for plumbers and installers. The training course was aimed at bringing the solar heating technology closer to the end-users, and more directly in the sales line for similar products.

Process
The course was held in collaboration with the Regional Energy Agency "West Energy Network" and the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute. Plumbers, installers, municipal energy advisors and consultants in the western part of Sweden were invited. Since the course included practical work, the number of participants was limited to 15.

The persons that participated in the course were also published as "trained" persons on the website of SEAS (Solar Energy Association of Sweden). This was done with the purpose of attracting more installers.

With an increasing demand from the end-users, the need for new groups of installers is necessary. One example that illustrates the need of installers is the technology competition on solar thermal systems for single-family houses that ended in the same period. The main aim of the competition was to decrease the prices by volume. More than 1000 systems were booked at this stage, and none of the competitors really had a solution on how to solve the installations. Therefore the installers became able to reach the actual end-users. At this stage, most of the installers that were working actively with solar thermal were among the early adopters and were driven more out of technology/environmental interest than out of business interests.

OPET Sweden also had an active part in the dissemination work that was carried out in the technology competition. The reason that it became a technology competition and not purely technology procurement depended on the fact that there was a lack of legal person/organisation that could sign a contract with the winning company. Otherwise it would have been carried out as technology procurement with the aim of decreasing the price level with the amount of systems to be sold.

Within the technology competition, there were also some calculations made on the payback time for the systems, and with the electricity price at this stage and the upcoming governmental subsidies the actual payback time was estimated to 5-7 years (depending on how the hot tap water usage was calculated).

With ongoing activities that supported each other the work package became more complete.

Actions
- Training courses

Financial resources and partners
The project budget was € 5,771.

Results
Of the maximum of 15 people, eventually 12 participated: half of these were plumbers and half energy advisors. Three of the participating plumbers now have the products for sale to their customers in the region, and one installation has been started. They have also taken interest in finding third-party financing for their solar installations in order to increase their market shares.

These kind of activities work best when there are activities running at the same time, meaning that it would have been more difficult to manage to fill even this one single training course if there had not been other activities supporting the Solar Thermal sector. The technology needs to be disseminated and awareness needs to be raised in order to ensure an increased focus.

Since then, there have been several training courses arranged by the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute. In 2004/5, individual training courses have been arranged with approximately 100 participants.

Links to the other organizations involved:
- Swedish National Testing and Research Institute
- Solar Energy Association of Sweden

Lessons learned and replication potential
The key success factor in this activity was the participation of installers, which was difficult to achieve. Another factor is that several of the installers have started up activities within the Solar Thermal sector.

One of the main problems is to get installers to become interested in new products on a more or less over heated market. The only way to overcome that is to show that there is money to earn.

Training activities that are carried out in cooperation with activities to accelerate the market development should be applicable on almost any product, where there is a need to train installers or other relevant groups.

If this were carried out today, the focus might be first to get a smaller group into business and by that showing that there is a possibility to make money in the field.