Our first conference on Solar District Heating, which took place on 9-10 April 2013 in Malmö, Sweden, created great international interest and attracted 120 participants from 19 countries. In this newsletter you will find more and detailed information about the interesting conference contributions and discussions held, but also about other new initiatives on Solar District Heating and new plants coming up in Europe and worldwide. We hope to awake your interest in our activities. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us for any further information.

Your SDH-Project Team
May 2013

With 120 participants from 19 countries and many different backgrounds, the first Solar District Heating conference in Malmö, Sweden was a success. Presentations are available under the documents section of the SDH website.

What will (at least for a short period) be the world’s largest solar thermal plant for district heating is now being constructed in Dronninglund in Denmark.

After six years of planning and building, the Second World War bunker which will deliver district heat to a district of Hamburg thanks to a combination of solar thermal collectors, large heat storage and other environmentally friendly energies has been inaugurated in March 2013 for the International Building Exhibition IBA.

The solar district heating guidelines provide technical and non-technical thematic information about the implementation process of solar district heating plants. A new factsheet describes available calculation tools that can be used during the preliminary investigations. All solar district heating guidelines are available to download here.

The new committee called 'Smart Cities' aims at deepening innovation issues. AIRU members take part voluntarily into the committee, sharing experiences and know-how and investigating new technical opportunities.

Josef Robert Straninger, Country Coordinator of the Competence Center Renewable Energies at UniCredit Leasing, answered to solarthermalworld.org about the necessary steps for a successful financing of a large-scale solar thermal plant. The interview can be found here.