Edo Wiemken, Mario Motta, Carsten Hindenburg, Hans-Martin Henning Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Freiburg, Germany e-mail: Edo. Wiemken@ise. fraunhofer. de

Solar assisted air conditioning opens the opportunity to substitute partly con­sumption of primary energy partly by use of environmentally friendly solar energy. Although the components of such systems are in general commercially available, the composition of the entire system requires special attention in design, sizing of components and in the planning of the control strategy.

The support in the design and planning of these systems ranges from simple rules to advanced design tools, allowing a high degree in system modelling precision. A pre­requisite in nearly all situations is the determination of the load structure in the desired application. In this paper, a selection of rules, available guidelines and calculation tools, useful in the decision and planning process of a solar assisted air­conditioning system is presented and briefly discussed.