The potential for solar roof space is awesome. OptiEnergy has linked up with Bulgaria’s largest developer of logistics parks and warehousing to provide access to 250000m² of unshaded roofspace across some of the country’s sunniest areas.
The business case is clear, the development can start tomorrow, planning risk is removed, security is inherent, incentives are generous and the whole rooftop portfolio has one owner so the title and exit strategies are also very clear.
The efficiency case is also overwhelming. Enough sunlight strikes unshaded Bulgarian rooftops to replace all the coal and some of the natural gas we use to make electricity.
The nature of the location gives us a welcome opportunity to begin concentrating PV using advanced aerospace quality cells we could convert solar at 30 percent rather than 15 percent efficiency.
Further, waste heat from this process could provide much of our heating and cooling needs as well. Since some commercial scale chillers run on low to medium temp heat today, with enough storage solar CHP could provide close to 100 percent of commercial heating and cooling. But that much storage takes a lot of capital for a small incremental gain. So more realistically, we would put 16 to 24 hours of low temp Phase Change Material storage and use ground source heat pumps to provide the other 15 percent of low temp needs. As a side effect, the overnight storage would let us run those heat pumps when the electricity was cheapest -- which will prove more important than it might appear at first glance.
And our involvement with the developer provides us a generous pipeline of roofspace at the design stage providing a great opportunity for innovative, barrier-pushing BIPV.
Target date for the launch of the first project is 31 October 2008.
Register your interest now and you be first to know more.
