The solar thermal cooling plant at the United World College (UWC) in Singapore has now entered the commissioning phase. The system's collector surface covers an area of 3,900 m² and powers a 1,500 kW cooling unit, which is based on a single-effect lithium bromide absorption chiller.

The largest solar thermal project in the Midwest located in downtown St. Paul was completed in March. It's the first of its typye in the United States to be integrated with a district energy system.

A project that is unique in Europe has been launched in Hamburg by E.ON to feed heat from renewable energy sources into the public district heating grid. Home owners who produce heat with the aid of solar-thermal systems can feed it into the grid of E.ON Hanse Wärme.

The Workshop on Solar District Heating in Ferrara, Italy takes place on the 29th and 30th of September 2011. It will be an international forum of exchange between interested and experienced heat suppliers, local utilities and communities who face the challenge to make their district heating grids more sustainable.

Denmark continues the very progressive development of solar district heating in virtually the entire country. The development is partly due to the political desire for significantly more renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels.

The new underground heat storage in Czech Republic is being constructed in the rock environment with the intention of testing reactions of the rock environment on different heat and time regimes. This storage may lessen energy consumption for heating and air conditioning purposes.

On top of the fair halls in Wels, Austria on May 12th a solar thermal plant of nearly 3,400 m² and a thermal power of approx. 2 Megawatt went into operation. This is the largest CPC-ETC installation at the moment for supporting a district heating network system worldwide. In summer, the heat utilities are able to save temporarily over 50 percent of natural gas.

A common plant, with 10 000 sqm solar collectors, will gain close to 4 GWh/a of heat to be distributed via the district heating network. “This is better than to build small solar systems on all our buildings.”, states Börje Göransson, managing director of Finnvedsbostäder and the initiator of the project.

According to the amended German directive to support renewable energies in the heat market (15th March 2011), solar collectors which feed into district heating networks are explicitly supported for the first time.

The recently adopted Italian legislation (No. 28/2011), implementing EC Directive 28/2009, foresees a comprehensive revision of the supporting measures for renewable heat, among which solar thermal. A combination of a feed-in tariff and “White Certificates” is expected.