Solar Combi+ systems use heat from solar thermal collectors to provide heating in winter, cooling and summer and domestic hot water all the year round. Fig. 1 sketches the main components, which make up a typical system: (i) the solar thermal collector to provide the heat might be backed up by another heat source, (ii) a storage tank can either be installed on the warm side, as drawn in the figure, on the cold side or on both, (iii) the domestic hot water tank might be included in the hot storage or be a separate tank, (iv) the sorption chiller is fed with hot water (70-100°C), (v) rejects heat at intermediate temperature (30-40°C) to a cooling tower (dry, wet) or another heat sink (as e. g. a swimming pool) and (vi) delivers chilled water to the cold distribution (be it a chilled ceiling, fan-coils or air handling units), whereas (vii) the heat distribution should possibly be a low temperature system.

Fig. 1. Example for the system components of a Solar Combi + System and project logo

All the single components of a system are now market available: But there is so far hardly a provider of system solutions, and that’s the point where the project is puts efforts forth.