Solar cooling - state of the art of solar thermally driven heat pumps for cooling

Part of: Thermally driven heat pumps for heating and cooling. – Ed.: Annett Kühn – Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013 ISBN 978-3-7983-2686-6 (print) ISBN 978-3-7983-2596-8 (online) urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-39458 [http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-39458]An attractive alternative to conventional electricity driven cooling systems is solar cooling, which combines thermally driven heat pumps/chillers with solar thermal collectors. Solar cooling is especially interesting if the solar thermal system is also used for other applications such as heating, hot water, etc. Thus, maximum operation time and low-cost driving heat for sorption chillers are the key for economic efficiency of solar cooling systems. Several small and medium-scale sorption chillers are developed in the last few years, some of them especially for solar cooling applications. Today about 1,000 solar cooling systems are installed worldwide, where the market has grown in the last 8 years between 40 and 70% per year