Dr Stephen White, Chair of the Australian Solar Cooling Interest Group (ausSCIG) and Energy for Buildings Manager at the CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship, says that in 2012 the “even greater appetite” for innovative solutions to address climate change will lead to increased interest from governments and private enterprise in the potential of solar cooling technology.
Dr White tells EcoGeneration that, in order for Australia’s solar cooling sector to flourish, the technology must receive the same kind of attention as other clean energy sources – and he explains how ausSCIG is working to make this happen.
How is the ausSCIG working to improve the prospects of solar cooling in Australia?
There are approximately 1,000 solar cooling installations in operation around the world, so the process is definitely proven as being technically feasible. However, solar cooling technology is in its infancy in Australia. There is still a lot of work to do to grow the market we have half a dozen or so solar cooling installations, and we’re getting one or two per year being installed at the moment.
It’s a matter of showcasing the installations in operation overseas to the Australian clean energy industry, and communicating what’s happened to make those international examples successful. It’s also a matter of creating a ‘level playing field’, so that solar cooling becomes part of the clean energy arsenal in Australia and is treated on a similar basis to other renewable energy technologies. At the moment, that’s not the case.
Is there a particular solar cooling process that would be suitable for widespread commercialisation in Australia?
I don’t think we’ve landed upon one particular solution as being the one-size-fits-all approach. The most common form of solar air-conditioning at the moment is done using flat-plate solar collectors that are connected to absorption chillers. This type of solar cooling has seen significant application levels in Northern European climates, where radiant panels or chilled beams and ceilings are used as the method of cooling. Those applications also have quite low cooling tower temperatures, so the temperature lift is not too high and flat-plate collectors can be used on absorption chillers.
We’d probably have a bit of difficulty doing that kind of installation here. In Australia, we typically have to go for something like evacuation tubes to run absorption chillers, such as at the Echuca Regional Health hospital where an installation of this is working well. A project that the CSIRO is particularly involved in is desiccant air-conditioning that can run off low-temperature heat from flat-plate solar thermal collectors.
What initiatives have been undertaken internationally to strengthen the solar cooling sector?
European nations such as Spain, France, Germany and Austria have demonstrated the greatest interest in solar cooling and the highest number of installations up till now. Australia is certainly in the list of the top ten countries in the world for highest number of solar cooling installations.
At ausSCIG we work very closely with the International Energy Agency (IEA) on ‘Tasks’ to support the development of the technology and the broader sector, both in Australia and around the world. These Tasks involve a collection of interest parties completing a package of work targeted at bringing forward a particular technology.
In our case, solar cooling has been selected as a technology of interest, and people from across Europe and IEA member countries send their representatives to work on bringing forward the technology. This is done through the development of the technology itself, and also by highlighting the opportunities associated with the technology and the need for support mechanisms to enable the related industry to develop.
We worked on Tasks 25 and 38 for solar cooling, and now in the newest Task 48 – Quality Assurance and Support Measures for Solar Cooling – I’m leading up the support measures sub-task, looking at how we can benchmark alternative technologies and place constraints around definitions for different technologies so that they can potentially be eligible for some form of support mechanism from governments.
What sort of regulatory or policy support is needed in Australia to further develop solar cooling?
At the moment, solar cooling is not an eligible technology for clean energy credits in Australia. We can’t get Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) for solar cooling. Solar cooling needs to be treated on a level playing field with other renewable energy technologies, because there’s a carbon saving to be made with solar cooling – typically through the reduction in electricity consumption it brings. That’s where IEA Task 48, and particularly the sub-task that I’m leading, is really important.
We’ve got to put some methodologies in place to enable us to calculate the carbon savings in a standardised fashion so that people can actually predict what the installation is going to save, and do it in a robust and scientifically valid way so that people can agree on what is an appropriate amount of RECs to hand over for it. We’ve got a bit of work to do to get in place all of the standards and design methodologies and things to enable us to make claims for these kind of mechanisms.
Having funding through bodies like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Australian Solar Institute (ASI) is certainly bringing forward the industry, and there are a couple of projects that have been funded under the ASI that will help to bring solar cooling forward scientifically.
What will the next twelve months hold for your work at ausSCIG and the CSIRO?
The interest group will be more formally rolled into the Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating as a special technical group of that organisation, and so my role there will be all about promoting solar cooling and making sure that we make progress towards getting those mechanisms in place to be treated on the level playing field.
At the CSIRO, I’ll be researching solar air-conditioning from an engineering perspective, and there we’re on the cusp of commercialising a three-in-one residential solar thermal system. The system will use solar hot water (conventional residential solar hot water panels and the resulting solar heat) to provide space heating in winter, and using the desiccant cooling process to make solar cooling in summer.
There’s a process that has just started up to create a solar cooling standard in Australia. Standards Australia is convening the process and a committee has been brought together for that, attempting to use the methodologies applied to the solar hot water schemes for measuring carbon savings from thermal heat. The CSIRO is doing a big demonstration of solar desiccant cooling in Newcastle, New South Wales, which we’re looking to commission before Christmas. It’s a very exciting time ahead.
