French High Quality Solar Heating and Cooling Demo Projects Incentive Scheme: Emergence Program
Abstract
A grant mechanism called Emergence program specific to solar heating and cooling installations was prepared in France in 2009 and is active now in 2010. This program is completely new and unique in France and even in Europe: it comes from a wish of both French government and solar heating and cooling professionals to build a high quality solar heating and cooling demo projects incentive scheme. The chillers targeted by the program are those with a capacity between 5 and 200 kW, this range of capacity permits to include the wide majority of chillers manufacturers on the market. The Emergence Program aims at granting 15 to 30 installations until June 2012. The grant will be insured in regard to 3 selection criteria: the project data must be coherent (low energy building, energy used for cooling and for heating adapted to solar resource, etc.), there is minimum annual thermal performance level to reach (overall thermal useful energy per collector area unit: 350 kWh/m².year), there is a minimum electrical annual efficiency to reach (minimum annual electrical COP: 5), and the installation will have to be monitored for at least the first complete two years. Then, if the project respects these three selection criteria, the grant should be calculated on the basis of the European maximum rates (system aid directive, 01/04/2008). By this way, the Emergence program should strongly stimulate the French solar air-conditioning market with performances and reliability against high grant level.