Our aim in developing this controller is to offer the solar thermal industry the opportunity to zero carbonise all solar thermal systems. It is becoming accepted that zero carbon design is the gold standard in European housing design. The UK government consultation document3 published in December 2006 and entitled, Building A Greener Future: TowardsZero Carbon Development, discusses this in some detail and states that,“developing new homes to low and zerocarbon standards on a large scale, we can promote technologies and innovation which will help drive down emissions from the existing stock too. Our key goal is to achieve zero carbon new homes within a decade.”. Further, a recent life cycle analysis paper2 of three micro generators, states that “The UK domestic building sector, which contributes around 30% of final energy demand, and about 23% of greenhouse gas emissions, can play an important role in CO2 abatement. An uptake of low or zero carbon (LZC) distributed energy resources would help this sector to reduce fossil fuel energy use and CO2 emissions.”

3. Conclusions

Zero Carbon PV powered controllers and pumping for solar thermal systems should be seen as the new gold standard. These solar energy systems offer greater sustainability for the solar thermal industry avoiding the potential energy claw-back of up to 33% on conventional solar thermal. The opportunity for solar thermal manufactures and their customers to fully embrace zero carbon solar thermal technology has now become a simple reality.

Since the technology is now available to achieve this step change, it can be argued that all new solar thermal systems in Europe should be PV pumped by an agreed target date (such as 2012) and the industry’s current somewhat atomised approach on component efficiency should soon be

replaced by focussing on system sustainability. This should require zero carbon operation of solar thermal systems as mandatory in all domestic scale solar thermal installations.

References

[1] Martin C, Watson M. Side by side testing of eight solar water heating systems. ETSU S/P3/00275/REP/2, DTI/Pub URN 01/1292

[2] Allen, S. R., G. P. Hammond, H. Harajili, C. I. Jones, M. C. McManus, and A. B. Winnett, 2008. Integrated appraisal of micro-generators: methods and applications. Proc. Micro-Cogen 2008, Ottowa, Canada, 29 April — 1 May, Paper MG2008-SG-005, 8pp

[3] Building A Greener Future: TowardsZero Carbon Development 07HC04711, report available on download on 1st July 2007 at the following location

http://www. communities. gov. uk/publications/planningandbuilding/futuretowardszerocarbon