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IEA SHC Task 38 Solar Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Subtask A Report, November 2009
1 Introduction
Systems for solar heating and cooling with a cooling capacity below 20 kW should be as
much pre-engineered as possible. That means that the entire system layout and the size of
all components is pre-defined by the manufacturer or seller of the system. To install such a
system there is no detailed planning process necessary. It can be bought “off the shelf”
designed for a given heating and cooling load and can be installed by an HVAC installer.
Unfortunately, only few companies offer this kind of pre-engineered system up to now.
To help companies in putting together such a system, this report aims at showing
components for (small) solar heating and cooling systems that are on the market and can be
used to design pre-engineered systems.
The report is divided into 4 subchapters:
1) Solar combisystems
Solar combisystems without cooling function are the basis for each solar heating and cooling
system. The report shows the variety of systems on the market and discusses which
characteristic makes them more or less suitable for coupling with a thermally driven chiller.
2) Thermally driven chillers
In this chapter, an overview of chillers on the market up to a cooling capacity of 20 kW is
given. Only chillers that are commercially available or at least in a pre-commercial stage, are
considered. Tables dealing with different chiller technologies show the most important
technical data of each chiller.
3) Heat rejection units
As there is a large number of companies offering heat rejection units, there is not a complete
list of manufacturers and models included in this report. Instead, there is a description of the
most important technologies for heat rejection for small scale systems. In addition, there is a
list of heat rejection units that is used in systems included the Task 38 (Subtask A)
monitoring program. This list shows some key data of these systems.
4) Cold stores
Currently the technology for cold storage that is used for small systems are simply cold
water stores. Because there are a lot of manufacturers on the market that offer this kind of
stores, a list of manufacturers and models is not included.
However, ice storage is becoming increasingly interesting also for small-scale systems (for
research and demonstration systems). Therefore, a short description of the available
technologies is included in this report as well as a list of companies that is engaged in ice
storage. Although small units are not available on the market they may be available on
request.
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