Environmental Engineering Reference
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China
93 km²
others
15.4 km²
USA
2.3 km²
Austria
2.7 km²
Greece
3.3 km²
Israel
Japan
4.9 km²
6.8 km²
Germany
Turkey
8.1 km²
9.5 km²
Figure 6.22 Total installed collector area in different countries without swimming pool
absorbers. Status 2006. Data: (IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme SHC, 2008).
tube collectors rather than in simple fl at-plate collectors. Due to the large number
of units produced for the Chinese market, Chinese suppliers are very competitive
internationally. Most of the vacuum-tube collectors sold in the world come from
China.
In the European Union, Germany dominates the solar collector market. Countries
with a lot of sunshine, such as Spain, Portugal and France, are still developing
countries as far as solar thermal systems are concerned.
If one considers solar thermal collector area installed per head, small countries have
the edge. In Cyprus almost every house has a solar thermal system on it. In 2008
this Mediterranean island had around 693 000 m 2 of collector area distributed among
778 000 inhabitants. There are nearly 900 m 2 of solar collectors per 1000 Cypriots.
In Austria, in comparison, this fi gure is 388 m 2 , and for Germany it is less than 135 m 2
per 1000 inhabitants. Sunny Spain fares even more poorly with just 30 m 2 per 1000
inhabitants, and in the United Kingdom the fi gure is a paltry 6 m 2 . Local market
conditions and acceptance by the population both have considerably more infl uence
on the amount of installed collector area than the supply of solar radiation.
Germany is an example of how political conditions can affect markets. Until 2001
there was continuous market growth. In 2002 the market suffered a setback because
of changes in incentive conditions and associated market insecurity (Figure 6.23),
but has since recovered.
Altogether more than one million solar thermal systems with a total area of 11
million square metres were installed at the end of 2008. This constitutes more than
40% of the 27.2 million square metres in the European Union. In the same year the
solar thermal sector in Germany accounted for 25 000 jobs. The solar systems are
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