Old heating with new solar system

With the uncertainties of the past year, it has become clear to everyone that heating is not a trivial issue. On the contrary, the amount of thermal energy needed to heat apartments, offices, and homes is enormous.

In 2020, private households consumed a total of around 600 billion kilowatt-hours of thermal energy. This is almost as much as the thermal energy consumption of industry, trade, and service sectors combined. The trend is rising.

But what happens when the prices for natural gas—and consequently for all alternative energy sources such as oil, wood, pellets, and electricity—rise sharply? Then heating suddenly becomes unaffordable for many.

This can be addressed by supplementing your heating system with a solar thermal system. This system utilizes the free energy from the sun and requires far less space than photovoltaic systems. Depending on the building and the desired solar coverage, just a few collector modules are sufficient.

The solar thermal system can easily be integrated into the existing heating system by a heating technician. This allows you to use the free solar energy to support hot water production or even the entire heating system. This means the “regular” heating system, whether it is a gas boiler or heat pump, has to generate less heat, logically saving money.

With full vacuum tube collectors, you can significantly increase the share of solar heat, even in autumn and winter, thanks to low losses. The overheat-safe heat pipe tubes of the AKOTEC collectors also enable smaller and therefore cheaper expansion vessels, facilitate system safeguarding, and reduce temperature stresses in the system. Additionally, the vacuum tubes are very robust. In tests, the tubes withstood impacts from 40 mm ice balls (the size of golf balls) traveling at 100 km/h.

In general, any heating system that is less than 10 years old can be upgraded with a solar thermal system. For older systems, however, your heating technician can advise you on how the integration can be implemented.

For new buildings, there are basically no real limitations, as a solar thermal system can be combined with all common heating systems, whether conventional or heat pump.

Additionally, solar thermal systems are subsidized by at least 25% by the BAFA. The subsidy applies not only to the system components but also to the installation costs.