About common but avoidable faults during planning, installation, and operation of solar heating plants in industrial applications

In the BEsoPro research project, multi-year measured solar yields of 13 solar heat for industrial processes (SHIP) plants in Germany are compared with planned values. The data come from plants installed between 2012 and 2019, with three collector technologies supplying heat to different industrial processes in the low-temperature range, below 100°C for all but one plant. The average collector area of the plants studied is 327 m²_gr. With a high certainty, seven of the SHIP systems achieve a lower energetic performance than predicted and four systems reach the expectations. For the last two systems no conclusive quantitative assessment is made due to insufficient measurement data. A list of ten common faults and problems in SHIP plants is then defined based on the analysis of additional detailed measurement data available for eight of the 13 plants, combined with the authors’ long experience with SHIP plants. Particularly common faults are the undersizing of the solar heat exchanger and the undersizing of the pump(s) in the solar collector loop. No critical problems or major component or system defects are found. Overall, most faults could be avoided relatively easily with better system planning and installation. These findings should be urgently addressed by the branch to avoid long-term damaging effects on the image of SHIP systems.