Solar Cooling: The Next Frontier for Distributed Generation?

By Badal Shah
December 31, 2012 

 

Earlier this month, U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Jon Wellinghoff hailed distributed generation an unstoppable trend in power generation, noting that more than 40 percent of all new generation since June was from renewables, much of that distributed.

A significant portion of new distributed (or customer-side) generation is from solar photovoltaic (PV), which has expanded more quickly than most expected due largely to the declining cost of PV modules as well as increased competition, which have made installation more economically feasible for home and business owners. In fact, solar PV is one of the reasons California is on track to not only meet but exceed its goal of deriving 33 percent of the state’s power from renewable sources by 2020 – a goal once thought of as extremely ambitious and potentially unattainable.

Solar PV is not the only way to harness the sun’s energy to meet energy and environmental goals, however. This past August, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report which found that solar thermal technology could meet one-sixth of the world’s heating and cooling demands, saving 800 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2050. What’s more, solar cooling could help avoid the need for new transmission capacity, saving energy consumers money and making our electric systems more sustainable.

Solar thermal can be used more efficiently than solar PV to power large, energy-intensive devices such as commercial air conditioners. This emerging technology uses the sun’s rays and vapor absorption technology (as compared to the vapor compression technology used by traditional air conditioners) to produce the necessary cooling power. Given traditional air conditioners demand an enormous amount of electricity, and generally at the hottest part of the day when solar power is most abundant, advances in this technology could significantly reduce energy demand and improve our environment.

The installation of commercial-scale solar thermal cooling systems is already underway. My company, Flareum Technologies, for example, recently completed installation of a solar-powered air conditioning system to provide cooling power to the Bangalore offices of Siemens Technologies. This system produces 200 kWh of cooling power while reducing the carbon footprint of the office by 30,000 tons of emissions annually and saving Siemens more than $12,000 annually in cooling costs.