SMEThermal 2010 Solar Thermal Materials, Equipment and Technology Conference
Solar Thermal Industry: Start of a new era in industrial assembly
The success of SMEThermal, the first international conference
dedicated specifically to the solar thermal industry, on Thursday the 4th March, far exceeded the expectations of the organizers. The conference, which examined the issues surrounding automated component manufacture and supplier quality, attracted 150 attendees from 20 different countries to the one-day meeting in Berlin. The organizer was the Berlin-based Solarpraxis, a knowledge and service provider specializing in renewable energies.
"SMEThermal closes a gap in the conference landscape for solar technology in Europe." said Baerbel Epp, director of the Bielefeld Agency solrico - solar market research & international communication - who, together with Raffaele Piria of the Berlin consultancy eclareon, was responsible for the conference's program. To date there has been no forum for a dialogue between producers of solar-thermal storage and collectors on the one hand, and the suppliers of machinery and materials on the other.
The concept worked. Representatives of such well-known corporations in the heating and building materials industry as Viessmann, Bosch, Baxi, Vaillant, Roth, Schüco and Kingspan took advantage of the opportunity; so too did decision makers from the solar thermal industry in Spain, Turkey and Greece.
The sponsors were very satisfied with the quality of the contacts. "We have made some very good company contacts and are definitely coming back next year." was the satisfied verdict of Dr. Rolf John, director of the Solar Division of Fix Maschinenbau, a subsidiary of the engineering group UTZ.
The solar thermal industry is at a turning point. After some decades using manual assembly, it has reached a size that makes automation both possible and necessary. Positive experiences from the first semi-automated production lines were presented and discussed at the meeting. "Today we can produce larger quantities of cheaper collectors" reported Manfred Kiefer, Technical Director of the Austrian collector manufacturer Sun Master, when speaking about the benefits of investment in machinery.
Cycle times 1 to 2 minutes and optimized assembly lines, requiring only 2 to 3 workers, are ringing in a new era in industrial solar thermal production. The producers are confident: "The material and manpower shortages in glass and storage we encountered during the previous boom years of 2006 and 2008 have been overcome" said Marc Vigneron, managing director of Viessmann Faulquemont. The European solar thermal industry is very well positioned for the coming years of strong growth.
Quality issues also played a major role at the meeting. Using well designed cathodic protection and by ensuring quality standards during enamelling, storage units can now last 15 to 20 years. This was the impressive message from Christopher Klein-Schmeink, sales and marketing director of Magontec, the world's largest supplier of cathodic protection systems for solar thermal storage.
"The presentations covering the very important area of the production of solar thermal storage systems were good and full of detail. We have benefited greatly from the content of the conference" was the satisfied opinion of Hakan Alas, deputy managing director of Turkey's largest solar manufacturer Ezinc.
The great response to the meeting clearly shows the level of demand for dialogue within the industry. SMEThermal will be staged again in spring 2011 as the exclusive forum for the international solar-thermal industry - organized by Solarpraxis in cooperation with solrico and eclareon, and together with the respected trade journals Sonne Wind & Wärme and Sun & Wind Energy.
Further information can be found under www.solarpraxis.de/index.php.
Contact:
Solarpraxis AG
Miriam Hegner
Tel.: +49 (0)30/72 62 96-304
E-Mail: conferences@solarpraxis.de
www.solarpraxis.de
