The Contribution of Portuguese Solar Thermal Program on the Country Energy Efficiency
Abstract
Although the efforts on renewable energy investment during the last decade, Portugal is still importing up to 80% of its energy supply. The solar radiation available all over the year is a strong reason to promote the utilization of this resource and during the year 2009, a new program based on a 50% subside, was promoted by the Portuguese government, directed to domestic applications in individual houses and other installations, to increase substantially the solar thermal market. As expected, a significant number of new installations were realized, which will contribute to the corresponding reduction on energy imports. In 2009 the state program provided the installation of more than 50,000 systems under special conditions, representing up to 176,000m2 of solar collector area. This area doubles the area installed in the previous year. Even without achieving the target initially proposed (250,000m2 installed), the program can be considered a success and this paper gives an overview of the main goals and results obtained until now and its contribution to the evolution of the Portuguese solar thermal collector market.