Practical Experience of two Small-Scale Solar Cooling Plants and Cost Comparison To PV Driven Chillers
Abstract
This work describes the measurement results and a cost analysis of two small scale solar thermal cooling plants located in Austria. All monitoring results refer to IEA SHC Task 38 level 3. The measurements were taken during the cooling period of summer 2009. Most of the monitoring results are not as high as expected; especially the electrical coefficient of performance (COP) could not reach the estimated values. The highest total monthly electrical COP of plant 1 could only reach a value of 1.87. For plant 2 an average electrical COPs of 3.09 were measured between August and September 2009. A cost comparison between the two solar thermal cooling plants and photovoltaic (PV) driven compression chillers was accomplished. The results show 4 to 7 times higher cold production costs (€/kWh) of the solar thermal plants compared to the PV driven systems and even 11 to 19 times higher production costs compared to the conventional compression chiller variant. These facts show that the economical performances of these two solar thermal systems in Austria are currently not competitive to other cooling systems.