Interaction of regulation and innovation: Solar air heating collectors

Solar Air Heating Collectors have still a very small share of 0.8% of the nominal installed capacity in the solar heating and cooling market (151.7 GW(th)) [1]. Although constituting a niche market, the potential of those kind of collectors to provide heat for industrial processes, processing food, room heating, air preheating, drying processes or air conditioning could be significant. However, the technical potentials of the various technological solutions are not easy to compare. Such a comparison would be important for different interest groups: end consumers (cost/kWh), technicians (efficiency, long time durability), planers and designers (amortization time) and politicians (CO2 savings, national energy autonomy). In order to certify or rate technological variants it is necessary to have a standardized procedure for characterization based on scientific results. Important achievements were made in this respect within the last three years in Germany. The paper presents the latest results in characterizing methodology for the different kinds of Solar Air Heating Collectors. It also discusses the implicit consequences which the interaction of testing methodology and regulative policies has on the innovation, diffusion and technical development. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.