Monitoring Program of Small-Scale Solar Heating and Cooling within IEA-SHC Task 38 – Procedure and First Results

Within IEA-SHC Task 38 (Solar Air Conditioning and Refrigeration), a monitoring procedure for solar heating and cooling systems was developed. This methodology includes measurements of all relevant energy flows (heat, cold, electricity) to be able to derive key figures such as primary energy ratio, electrical coefficient of performance, solar heat management efficiency, fractional savings for heating and cooling compared to a conventional (non solar) heating and cooling system. A number of small-scale systems for solar heating and cooling are currently being monitored across Europe. For a handful of systems monitoring data of at least a full year of operation is already available. These systems include different chiller, heat rejection and collector technologies and are used for different applications (office buildings, canteen, school etc.). Key figures derived from the monitoring data of these systems will be presented in this paper as well as a comparison of the systems with each other.