Website: www.solarge.org

Case Study (708 Kb PDF)

Summary

SOLARGE is a European cooperation project supported by the Intelligent Energy - Europe programme of the European Union; the consortium consists of eleven partners from eight countries. The project is aiming at opening up the long ignored markets for large-scale solar thermal plants with collector areas of 30 square metres upwards for domestic hot water supply as well as supplementary heating and cooling in multi-family houses, hotels, public and social buildings.

SOLARGE offers information, training and communication measures, which raise awareness and build up capacities for quality planning and installing. Project activities motivate potential private, commercial and public investors as well as suppliers and decision-makers in politics and administration to acknowledge and utilise the market potential of large solar thermal installations. Major results of SOLARGE are market studies, an online good practice database that currently presents 80 detailed case studies from various countries as well as specific training materials. Further achievements include successful policy advice, trainings and information events.

Results

SOLARGE is a non-technological project focussing on promotional and communicative measures to overcome lack of knowledge capacity and awareness in an area mostly overlooked and neglected in the past. Due to this fact, quantity and costs of energy saved by the project are neither easy to identify nor priority criteria within the project's achievements.

In general, SOLARGE proved to be an important first step into the area of opening up the markets for largescale solar thermal systems. A systematic approach to the information and awareness gap concerning CSTS by a national or regional alliance of experts, stakeholders and policy is to be seen as one important result of the project.

Further results include:

• The publication of eight detailed national market studies and one common market report comparing and analysing the national surveys
• A good practice database with more than 80 examples from various countries which offers insights into technical and financial details as well as description of development and experiences
• The preparation and dissemination of a high-quality image brochure on CSTS available in Danish, Dutch, English, German, Italian, Slovenian and Spanish

An English master version of the training materials with more than 200 slides and explanatory notes has been developed. Until now, SOLARGE partners have implemented about 15 training sessions with approximately 370 participants. Furthermore, the project was presented at regional, national and international level in more than 80 events such as conferences, seminars, trade fairs and workshops in all partner countries for various stakeholders like installers, planning and housing companies, investors, experts and research institutions. In Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovenia, SOLARGE partners developed CSTS strategy papers for national authorities or networks.