World first in Australia for PV thermal hybrid technology by Nigel Morris

Solar Business Services

Australia’s punishing climate is often chosen as a launch site for new products and this week, no less than two world firsts happened.

Although Turkish company Solimpeks have been making solar thermal products for almost thirty years, the last eight years have been dedicated to the research and development of photovoltaic/thermal (PV T) hybrid products. This week, the company installed the first system in the world using its all new 200Watt PV T collectors, right here in Australia.

Solimpeks PV T products have been successfully sold overseas for three years now, but this happens to be the very first Australian installation of PV T technology for the locally based arm of Solimpeks who launched in mid-2012.

Is this the start of a whole new way of looking at rooftop energy generation?

Photovoltaic thermal hybrid panels combine traditional PV panels (producing electricity) with traditional solar thermal panels (producing hot water) into a single package. I have watched this technology for many years, having experimented with similar concepts in the previous R&D work and it’s great to see a fully commercialised product finally hitting the market.

Solimpeks Australia has successfully passed every major PV and Thermal test in Europe and Australia including AS:4020 and AS:2712 and has had its performance validated through independent tests. This fourteen square meter, 2kW Australian installation will go one step further by collecting a vast array of data and information on its new products, in real world conditions. The installation includes a pyranometer, wind speed, ambient temperature, water temperature in/out and PV energy. The data will be available on a live web site within a few weeks allowing potential customers to see how the system performs on a domestic home.

One thing that we know about the Australian solar market is that many buyers of PV are also interested in solar thermal, and vice versa. The conceptual benefits are enormous of course, including:

• Combining the capability to generate electricity, heat domestic hot water and heat swimming pools in a single product
• The use of carefully controlled thermal dissipation keeps the PV cells operating within a smaller temperature window, improving PV performance
• The power and or heat output can be controlled and altered to suit different seasonal needs
• Particularly well suited to swimming pool heating and vastly superior in efficiency
• Installation and support is a far simpler matter than buying and installing multiple products
• Energy and heat output ideally suited to domestic and commercial industries such as food processing and public swimming pools