Award-winning solar experts Savosolar

Savosolar was established in 2009 by an international team of leading, vacuum coating experts whose combined experience has been harnessed to drive vacuum coating and solar energy technology to a new level. Philip Yorke talked to Jari Varjotie, the company’s CEO, about its unique, award-winning products and its move into new markets.

AWARD-WINNING SOLAR EXPERTS

Savosolar was founded in Finland in December 2009 and began the development of its revolutionary vacuum coating technology soon afterwards with a mission to become a world leader in Solar Thermal Technology. The company has already gone a long way towards achieving its goal with a multinational, world-class team of engineers and its first prestigious Intersolar Award granted in 2011 for its exceptionally efficient, Direct-Flow Absorbers. In addition, the Solar quality ‘Keymark’ has been granted to two of its collector types, and the company is also certified according to ISO 9000.

Today Savosolar exports its groundbreaking solar products to many European countries as well as to South Africa, where it has recently established a partnership with a local industrial company providing solar thermal systems. Meeting growing demand is not a problem for Savosolar, whose stateof-the-art manufacturing facilities are capable of coating around one million square metres of solar absorbers every year.

New concept harvests more energy

Savosolar’s new concept means exceptionally efficient collectors and absorbers for its OEM partners and collector manufacturers. The company’s remarkable AI-MPE Direct-Flow

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Absorber is by far the most efficient on the market today – a fact that was recognised recently when it received the coveted Intersolar Award at Intersolar 2011, for advancing solar thermal technology. The outstanding product advantages are due to a number of key innovative technologies. These have been combined to offer a highly selective (a=96 per cent, e=5 per cent), corrosion and temperature resistant PVD coating that can be applied directly to the complete, assembled absorber. It also offers optimised temperature distribution within the absorber owing to its unique, Direct-Flow design. Furthermore, its thin-wall, light, extruded Al profile is made out of ‘Hydro HylifeTM’ alloy. Additionally Savosolar is using in their collectors state-of-the-art solar glass from Sunarc in its collectors with AR-treatment on both sides.

All of this adds up to a remarkable level of efficiency, with an annual energy harvest that is 15–35 per cent higher than that of any of today’s standard absorber technologies. Mr Varjotie said, “We have developed a new type of solar absorber that is unique in many ways and offers the most efficient route to transfer solar energy to a liquid, which can then be used for heating water, space heating, industrial processes and even for cooling. In previous generation absorbers heat must be conducted from the absorber plate into copper through a narrow welding seam and then heat is transferred to the heat transfer liquid. In our absorber, heat is transferred directly into the heat transfer liquid inside absorber water channels – this we call Direct-Flow technology. No one else has a selective, optical coating process like this, so we are the only company in the world that can coat large complete absorbers in this way, which makes us different and extremely efficient.

“Although we are a new company, we are already very well known in the marketplace because of our revolutionary solar coating processes and our recent Intersolar award, which appeared to take the market by storm. We are the only company that can demonstrate this kind of performance efficiency. In

order to achieve this we use a very thin walled extruded Al profiles which are made from a special alloy-aluminium from Hydro Aluminium, and as result we have been top of the ‘discussion league table’ ever since.

“The press coverage that we received after winning the Intersolar award has helped us to significantly extend our export reach, as many companies throughout Europe were interested in our new vacuum coating process, which allows for the production of direct flow absorbers and has the most effective selective absorbance coating. This means that we have been able to increase our European presence and are continuing to gain new markets.

“Today we can offer our customers a twofold production capability: for our absorbers we provide a tailor-made service to meet any individual customer’s specification. For our collectors we also offer considerable flexibility. We produce these in three phases. The first is the welded aluminium MPE profile, followed by the coating itself and then the collector assembly. Currently we are able to produce 3000–4000 solar collectors per month and are investing heavily to ensure that we can continue to produce all our products in-house, in order to guarantee the highest possible consistency and quality for our customers.”

Dedicated service and production flexibility

Savosolar is able to meet today’s diverse demands for optimal efficiency and tailor-made solutions owing to its built-in management and manufacturing flexibility. In addition to supplying its full Al products, Savosolar can coat a wide variety of different absorber materials from Al and Cu to stainless steel, polymers and even concrete. Thanks to its in-line coating production procedures, absorbers may also be produced in different colours according to a customer’s individual preferences. With its full Al absorber, it is also possible to build complete Al solar systems and thereby further improve profitability for its OEM clients.

Savosolar’s direct-flow absorbers from Al, Cu, stainless steel and polymers can be readily produced for its collector manufacturers and OEM partners. The solar absorber is at the heart of every solar thermal collector and Savosolar’s innovative absorbers are based on its unique coating process that makes it possible to coat complete absorbers utilising its special direct-flow principle. This unique principle ensures superior heat transfer from the absorber to the fluid, as well as a uniform spread of heat distribution on the surface of the absorber, thus minimising any potential radiation loss.

In addition, the Savosolar Modular Large Area Absorber offers a unique opportunity to combine several standard size MPE absorbers to absorbers of required size. For further information about the Savosolar range of award-winning products and services, visit: www.savosolar.fi n