Design, Control and First Monitoring Data of a Large Scale Solar Plant at the Meat Factory Berger, Austria

Within the European FP7 Project InSun, which started in April 2012, three large scale solar plants for industrial processes in three different countries are installed and will be monitored in detail over a period of almost two years. The main idea of InSun is to demonstrate the reliability and quality of large scale solar thermal systems using different types of collectors for the generation of heat employed in different industrial processes. One of these demonstration plants is located in Austria and it is providing heat up to 90 °C for the manufacture of meat products in the factory Berger. Zafh.net, the coordinator of the project, developed a dynamic simulation model of this plant, which should be used to improve the control strategy of the real process. After two months of operation, the first monitoring data are available and will be compared with the simulation results. Based on this comparison, key performance figures (e.g. solar yield) could be predicted for the whole lifetime of the plant. Furthermore economical outputs could be calculated more precisely, which provides essential information for the key stakeholders in the industry.