E. Villa1*, C. Winkler2, M. Calderoni3, V. Drosou4, E. Wiemken5, M. J. Carvalho6,

Q. Cavalera7, O. Ayadi8, J. R. Lopez9, D. Mugnier10, S. Medved11, T. van Steenberghe12,

M. Proville13

1 target, GmbH, Walderseestrasse 7, 30163 Hannover, Tel 0511 909688-30, Fax 0511 909688-40,

villa@targetgmbh. de
2AEE — INTEC, Austria
3Ambiente Italia, Italy
4CRES, Greece
5Fraunhofer-ISE, Germany
6INETI, Portugal
7Provincia di Lecce, Italy
8Politecnico di Milano, Italy
9EVE, Spain
10TECSOL, France
11Uni. Ljubljana, Slovenia
12REHVA, The Netherlands
13AIGUASOL, Spain

* Corresponding Author, villa@targetgmbh. de

Abstract

In the framework of the European Union’s Intelligent Energy — Europe Programme, the SOLAIR project aims at the acceleration of the growth of small (up to 20 kW) and medium sized (20 kW — 105 kW) solar air conditioning (SAC) applications. In this scope, specific actions are being elaborated in order to promote, assist and influence the process of decision­making for the implementation of SAC systems and consequently to increase the confidence and the knowledge on the respective technology, mainly in the residential and commercial sector. The present work will describe the main results developed until half time of the project, which was initiated in January 2007 and will be concluded in December 2009.

The major results can be seen in the project web-page www. solair-project. eu.

Keywords: solar thermal systems, air-conditioning systems, SAC promotion, training

1. Introduction

In the framework of the European Union’s Intelligent Energy — Europe Programme, the SOLAIR project aims at the acceleration of the growth of small (up to 20 kW) and medium sized (20 kW — 105 kW) solar air conditioning (SAC) applications. In this scope, specific actions have been elaborated in order to promote, assist and influence the process of decision-making for the

implementation of SAC systems and consequently to increase the confidence and the knowledge on the respective technology, mainly in the residential and commercial sector.

Thirteen partners from Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and The Netherlands, including complementary partners to cover the full range of necessary skills and technical excellence, participate in the project.

The main targets of SOLAIR are:

• Promote the market implementation of small and medium-sized solar air-conditioning appliances, focusing on the residential and commercial sector, combining domestic hot water supply and space heating with air-conditioning

• Resolve major market obstacles: limited awareness on know-how as well as available instruments and the lack of information

• Create a set of instruments (including comprehensive training material) to assist the market growth of this technology

• Elaborate a set of measures targeting at the relevant key market actors

• Disseminate the activities in Europe and on national level

SOLAIR is addressing three relevant groups of market actors, which represent bottlenecks for a wider market diffusion of solar air-conditioning technologies:

Providers: engineers, plant designer, manufacturers, installers and technicians.

Investors: owners of residential and commercial buildings

Promoters: energy agencies, thematic networks, political decision makers, associations and NGOs

The present work will describe the main results developed until half time of the project, which was initiated in January 2007 and will be concluded in December 2009.

Presently all Work Packages (WP) were initiated. In section 2. the activities of the WP dedicated to “Market review and analysis of small and medium-sized solar air-conditioning” are described.

Section 3. is dedicated to the ongoing activities of the WP dedicated to “Capacity building and training activities”. In Section 4. the first results of WPs dedicated to “Information and awareness campaign towards the key market actors” and “Communication and dissemination” are presented. Section 5 is dedicated to the interaction of the project to other European and International activities and the way that the different activities contribute to the development of the main objectives of SOLAIR. In Section 6., as conclusions to the present work, the present view of the project partners to the main positive and negative aspects to the present development of the SAC systems is described.