It is important to get feedback about real performances, in order to increase knowledge in different fields and to be able to quantify the real contribution of solar plants in the reduction of primary energy consumption and green house gases emissions.

It must be pointed out that very few in situ monitoring works have been performed until now, not only for solar plants, but in all fields of buildings construction and especially for evaluation of space heating, Domestic Hot Water or ventilation systems. Due to the fact that solar systems are assisted by auxiliary systems, the over cost of the solar part has to be as much cost effective as possible. Therefore it is not possible to accept systems that don’t work on the best possible way,

otherwise the economic balance of the operation will be decreased, and confidence by the end user will be reduced.

Thanks to the result of the qualitative and the technical evaluation, the in-situ monitoring will start with the installation of the monitoring equipment. In order to succeed in this operation and to have consistent data, the same methodology will be used by all the partners: measured data (temperature, flowrate, …) will be exploited to obtain energy data in the different countries.

Up to now, some specifications for the monitoring equipment have been investigated in order to have a common base for the evaluation of solar combisystems and in order to have some intercomparisons between the different partners involved in CombiSol. Based on these specifications, some guidelines for calculation of saving indicators have been written: these guidelines will serve as reference for publishing the results during the dissemination phase.