World Wide Best practices for building integration of solar heating systems

Lex Bosselaar, Novem; Li Hua, Novem; Bart van der Ree, Ecofys; Tjerk Reijenga, Bear Architects; Alex Westlake, IT-power; Zhu Junsheng, CREIA; Yang Jinliang, Tianpu; He Zinian.

Most solar water heaters are still installed as an ad-hoc addition to a building, but the trend is to integrate the collector and the rest of the system into the building. The reasons for building integration are improved architecture, price-reduction and improved quality. In China, the world largest market for solar heating products, building integration is seen as a major bottleneck for further development of the market especially for new buildings. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) with financial support from UNF and UNFIP, initiated a project to overcome this bottleneck. One of the activities in this project was a study

[1] to collect the best practices for building integration world wide. This paper is based on the work performed for this study. The conclusion is that currently most installed collectors are still not building integrated, but building integration is essential for further market growth not only in China, but also in the rest of the world.

World market for solar heating

The markets for solar water heaters are typically local markets. Most products are sold in the country where they are produced. Table 1 gives an overview of the world market, based on reference [2] and [3]. The table is limited to glazed solar collectors, including evacuated tube collectors. This table covers only about 50% of the world population, but about 90% of the world market for solar collectors. It shows that China is the leading market in the world with 10 million square meters per year, which is nearly 78% of the yearly installed collector area in the world. Looking at the installed base, it shows that about half of all the solar collectors in the world are located in China.

Table 1: Overview of the world market for solar collectors (ref [1,2,3]).

Installed million m2

Installed in 2002

Growth

m2/pers

Population in million

China

40,00

10,000

27%

0,031

1300

Europe

11,27

1,23

14%

0,029

387

USA, Can., Mex.

3,14

0,075

40%

0,008

408

Japan

7,30

0,314

0

0,058

125

Israel+Turkey

9,92

1,020

n. a

0,134

74

India

0,55

0,050

n. a

0,001

1 000

Australia+NZ

1 ,33

0,115

30%

0,061

21,8

World market

73,50

12,800

0,022

3315,8