Asia's solar thermal potential

Is there a market for solar thermal in Asia?

This question is not easily answerable. On one hand of course people need hot water. On the other hand, many of these countries have natural solar water heating solutions by exposing the pipes to the sun or use of black water tanks, very common throughout all Asia.

So what is the purpose to design a solar water heater system that will always be more expensive? The answer lies on a different segment or easily said on a different scale: when more users are involved the amount of water to be heated increases and the roof area may be limited, so it is important to come with shared solar water heater systems.

This applies to hotels, malls, industries and domestic buildings. Shared systems for household can and should also be implemented in Asia.

The market can then be divided into pressurized and non-pressurized systems and that immediately relates to cost. Good solar thermal collectors use coated absorbers and copper piping as well as insulation.

All that can be relaxed in hot countries bringing down the costs and still be quality systems.

The affordable price is usually not perceived, since the system has already “fuel” incorporated and that does not have to be paid. We usually talk about payback as the criteria for decision on purchasing, but be aware of the real performance of the systems, since a lower cost may not surely mean the same heat generation potential – or the quantity of water at a certain temperature.

In Asia seldom standards have found their way among common people, but it should be the task of government to implement such minimum standards to avoid disappointments and prejudice from their citizens.

Solar thermal is the cheapest of all renewable Energies and has a tremendous impact on the energy consumption of any country and most importantly on the livelihood. Hot water provides comfort and quality of life and improves health standards.

The answer to the initial question is yes, there is a market, there is a need and it is good for the Asian countries. Standards and adoption of already established schemes – European, North America, India – should be the way forward.

Another area of interest in solar thermal is the concentrated solar thermal – CSP - and here the technical, economics and financials are completely different.

It is a power generation system, suitable for utility scale generation and requires a specific component of the solar irradiation – Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) – which is not abundant everywhere. In Asia India, China, Thailand have started implementing some CSP projects. Is there a market for CSP in Asia? If we take the two massive countries: India and China and if they are doing CSP, then the answer is yes. On the other hand CSP competes with PV for power generation with the single advantage of being cheaper than PV when dispatchable power is considered – it means with storage capacity.

The scope of application is shorter than PV and the market players are also less. CSP and all dispatchable solutions are required when grid management is an issue, so load analysis and load management should actually dictate whether CSP is a better solution than PV.

Good DNI sites exist in Asia and with large extensions and also low cost of land – usually barren lands – and if there is one solar energy that still has space for integration and addition of players is CSP, so it is also a business opportunity for Asia to be able to export technology to other continents.

Solar thermal has been forgotten with all the PV revolution, but solar thermal is an industry with more than 30 years old while PV is now becoming a teenager. Asia should not forget solar thermal in its policies and goals.

According to ESTIF (European Solar Thermal Industry Federation) almost 2.6 GWth were installed in 2011 (3500000 m2) in Europe and the total installed capacity in Europe is now 26.3 GWth, generating 18.8 TWh of solar thermal energy while contributing to savings of 13 MMt CO2. Despite the impact of the economic and financial crisis, the solar thermal sector still shows an average growth of 3.9% and 9.0% over the last five and ten years, respectively.

China – the solar thermal giant

According to the SHEC (Solar Heating and Cooling Program of the International Energy Association) on their yearly report on Solar Thermal worldwide regarding 2010, it is shown the installed solar thermal capacity worldwide per regions. China stands out with a massive 117600 MWth which means roughly 168 million sqm of collector area installed (1 m2 = 700 Wth)

Asia, without China, comes second with Japan, India, Taiwan and South Korea being above the 1000 MWth (1,5 million sqm of collector area). Thailand comes next in the ranking with around 64 MWth of installed capacity.

A more interesting metric may be the installed capacity per 1000 inhabitants, which removes the massive size of some countries versus others. The leaders in quantity and usually not the leaders in this metric an some countries do show a remarkable penetration of solar thermal, as Cyprus for example.

China comes first again closely followed by Australia and NZ. Asia is way back with 9 m2 per 1000 inhabitants. There is actually no reason why Asia lacks so much behind when even the MENA region comes third showing that hot water is also needed in hot countries.

Cyprus – the small great Champion – reigns with a massive 820 m2 per 1000 inhabitants and all those familiar with the solar thermal industry know that children in Cyprus never draw a house without a solar collector in the roof! A word for Austria which astonishingly comes third and it is a clear statement of the smart use of the solar resource for heating. China comes tenth, while Taiwan is the next Asian country in the list followed by South Korea, India and Thailand with slightly more than 1 m2 per 1000 inhabitants.

Solar thermal compares favourably to other Renewable Energy technologies and stands in installed capacity hand in hand with wind, way in front compared to PV. The growing trend of wind and PV versus solar thermal is huge and the gap is being bridged, but energy is not only electricity, so heat should not be overlooked!

The market growth is enormous in Asia, higher than anywhere else, even toppling China’s growth on this sector. We are poised to see Asia growing and taking advantage of the solar resource for heating and increasing the comfort of its populations. It is still common to see electrical water heaters being marketed strongly in Asia, while solar thermal should clearly be favoured and pushed by legislation.

Solar thermal technologies

In solar thermal for heating purposes it is usual to divide the market in unglazed, flat plate collectors (FPC) and evacuated tube collectors (ETC). The first refer to collectors that are open or are not enclosed with a glazed surface (glass), flat plates are the common type for almost everyone in the world, except in China where the evacuated tubes are more common. The distribution worldwide is:

Clearly the evacuated tubes in China crowd out all the others, though unglazed still have a big predominance in some markets, namely those for swimming pool heating (Australia and the US).

Chinese evacuated tubes are different from the European evacuated tubes and so are the prices and quality. It is nonetheless true that Chinese ETC from some companies are reliable and do provide a very interesting return on investment and increase the possibilities of building integration die to the nature of heat collection in evacuated tubes.

Another interesting metric is the type of system installed. Here we have thermosyphon (tank and collector are both on the roof) and using pumps (only the collectors are on the roof).

Asia (three countries are considered Japan, South Korean and Taiwan) shows a dominance of the former, which is also the case of China. Mostly we see domestic systems (Domestic Hot water – DHW) being the market for solar thermal worldwide, though interesting niches can be seen.

CO2 emissions

The potential of CO2 mitigation is a point to be taken and again two metrics are given, on quantity and on quantity per 1000 inhabitants. Asia can go a long way!