Design and planning support for solar assisted air-conditioning

Solar assisted air-conditioning is a growing application and provides the attractive opportunity in saving primary energy and peak-power demand in electricity. To date, most of the existing plants (approx. 50 installations in Europe) have been installed in the frame of demonstration and research projects and thus with very high effort during system design and planning. Actually, a lack of knowledge and experience in design and planning on the commercial side has to be overcome by measures to support the planning of the systems. Rules, guidelines and tools have been created for this reason in the course of numerous projects, with the capability in assisting the planning of a solar air-conditioning system on different levels. A selection of this measures was briefly discussed in this paper. The application of these or similar planning support measures is useful, since the integration of a renewable energy system with the property of fluctuating energy supply complicates the appropriate design and configuration of the system. Fundamental design errors may be avoided and the achievement of target values, e.g. of primary energy savings, can be ensured.