Market situations and trends of small scale chillers

The first part of the project was devoted to an analysis of possible markets for Solar Combi+ systems. Since the competing technology are conventional (non-solar) air conditioning systems, the available technological solutions with small cooling capacity as well as their markets in Europe were analysed.

The European Air Conditioning (AC) market has grown rapidly during the last 5 years. The size of AC markets in the seven major European countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK) expanded from some 2.4 million sold units in 2000 to 5 million sold units in 2004. A further breakdown of the European AC market reveals that Italy and Spain are holding the largest market of about 1.4 to 1.7 million units per year (after 2004), followed by France, Greece and UK at 300,000 to 500,000 units each [5, 6].

Подпись: Fig. 3. Evolution of the air conditioning market of individual air conditioners with a capacity below 17,5 kW in France. Sold units in the years 1998-2003 Подпись: Fig. 4. Share of air conditioners with different capacities on the overall Italian market in the years 2005 and 2006 [7]

For small cooling demands, typically room air-conditioning units or multi-split systems are used, as can be seen from a closer look at the France and the Italian markets can be stated that especially the monosplit units with small capacities are responsible for more than 50% of the overall sold units (see Figure 3 and 4). Application areas for these systems are mainly in smaller buildings such as the trade and residential sector and small office buildings where in the past mainly local solutions were used.

Подпись: Fig. 5. Number of systems sold until Feb. 2008, as reported by the SolarCombi+ industry partners Подпись: Fig. 6. Markets which are considered of high priority by the SolarCombi+ industry partners

However, small chiller systems have an increasing market share in many European countries. These smaller buildings are seen as the most promising target market for solar combi plus systems, which offer a central chiller system powered by solar heat (see Fig.5). The survey among the industrial participants of the SolarCombi+ project also showed that they see the most interesting markets for their Solar Combi+ systems in Spain, Italy and France (see Fig. 6).