Solar Thermal Energy Feasibility Tool

Inputs

Welcome to the Solar Thermal Energy feasibility tool. This tool was built for the ICaRE4Farms project to help farmers and consultants assess whether a solar thermal installation is viable for any given scenario.
Instructions
The tool is built to calculate the heat demand of different farming activities automatically, and compare this to the potential for solar energy for the location of the farm. To use the tool, simply select whichever farming activities apply to your farm. Afterwards, fill in the fields that show up in the tab for each farming activity. The size of the solar thermal installation is automatically calculated based on the heat demand of the selected farm activities. The outputs dynamically change depending on the farming inputs.
The tool also hosts a number of more advanced options, like being able to change the modelling of the solar panels. To enable these options, you can toggle the Advanced options in each tabs.
Contact details
If you would like to share your information with the ICaRE4Farms team, please fill in your contact details below. Someone from the ICaRE4Farms team will then follow up on your business case for a free consultation.
Open Call
This tool was built as part of the ICaRE4Farms project. Are you interested in having solar thermal energy on your farm? Then participate in the call for proposals!
By selecting ‘’Open Call’’ below this text, you are agreeing to participate in the call for proposals. This has several benefits for the first 30 applicants to be accepted. Participating in the call for proposals means you will receive a free detailed consultation from Fengtech, a 20% discount on the investment cost of your solar thermal installation, and an extended warranty after installation. Participating in the call for proposals is completely free and without commitments from your side.
To apply for the open call, please fill in your contact details first in the fields up above.
Developer & Acknowledgements
This tool was developed by CCS Energie-advies, a Dutch consultancy firm. For questions, please contact info@ccsenergieadvies.nl.

The map sections of this tool uses data supplied by OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, Leaflet.js and Leaflet.draw libraries are used for additional functionalities. Solar data is extracted from PVGIS and geocoding is performed using an API from Nominatim.
Location
Different countries have differing amounts of sunlight, rules and legislation, energy prices and so on. Please use the map to the right to select your (approximate) location.
Your selected location is close to: Velp
Farming Practice/Practices
Please specify below which farming activities take place on your farm. You can select multiple farming activities, but at least one is required for the tool. Afterwards, fill in the new tabs that show up in the top to calculate the annual heat demand of your farm.
Please select at least one farming activity.
Calf Feeding
In this tab you can calculate the heat demand required for calf feeding. This is the amount of hot water that is used by your farm to prepare milk for drinking. You can either directly fill in your daily hot water demand (if you know it), or let the tool calculate it by filling in the fields below it
If you do not know the total daily hot water demand, please fill in the daily hot water demand per calf in the following field. The average total daily hot water demand per calf is the amount of hot water that each calf consumes in the form of milk. This value changes depending on the age of the calf, but can be averaged over its lifetime. If you are unsure of how much hot water you use per calf.
The length of your breeding cycle is important, as it changes how much milk each individual calf consumes. Generally this is between 8 to 12 weeks.
Does your farm already have a hot water buffer?
If yes, please enter the volume of available buffer tank. If you do not know the value or your farm does not have the buffer tank, please leave this field empty. The tool will estimate the required buffer tank value for storing daily hot water demand.
Milk Pasteurization
Milk pasteurization is the high-temperature treatment of milk in order to make it safe for long term storage. By using solar thermal energy collectors to supply the heat, you can drastically reduce your fossil fuel intake and carbon footprint.
If you do not know the total daily milk production, please fill in the daily milk production per cattle in the following field:
If you do not know the hot water demand per liter of milk, please leave the following field empty. Then, the tool will estimate this value.
Does your farm already have a hot water buffer?
If yes, please enter the volume of available buffer tank. If you do not know the value or your farm does not have the buffer tank, please leave this field empty. The tool will estimate the required buffer tank value for storing daily hot water demand.
Cleaning
If you clean your stables using hot water, this can end up using a lot of energy. You can prepare this hot water using your solar boiler, however, which decreases your reliance on fossil fuels. Please fill in the following fields:
Does your farm already have a hot water buffer?
If yes, please enter the volume of available buffer tank. If you do not know the value or your farm does not have the buffer tank, please leave this field empty. The tool will estimate the required buffer tank value for storing daily hot water demand.
Process heating
If you have any other activities on your farm that require heat, but aren’t listed, you can manually add them here. For example, if you use hot water to treat manure or use hot water in some production process. Please fill in the following fields:
Does your farm already have a hot water buffer?
If yes, please enter the volume of available buffer tank. If you do not know the value or your farm does not have the buffer tank, please leave this field empty. The tool will estimate the required buffer tank value for storing daily hot water demand.
Solar thermal Energy system
This tool utilizes the specification of the Fengtech solar thermal collector for estimating the performance of the solar thermal energy system. If you intend to calculate the performance of other flat plate or evacuated tube collectors, you can select "custom" in the following field and enter the specification of your considered collector.
The option above allows you to change what the tool optimizes the business case for. You can either select the most economic option (default) or the maximum performance option. When set to the maximum performance option, the tool will increase the size of your proposed installation in order to get a larger share of sustainable energy. The additional panels will generally increase the payback period, though.

When set to the economic option, the tool limits the maximum amount of panels in order to make sure you will never generate excess energy which is wasted. This means you will need more energy from your alternative source during colder winter days, though. The graphs below illustrate the difference between these two settings.
The temperature of your tap water is important for the efficiency of the solar collector. If you are not sure about the average temperature of your tap water, 8°C is a good approximation.
Economic Evaluation
Please fill in the following fields:
Calculation
Have all details been entered? Then you can press the button here to calculate your case. Afterwards, you can adjust values ​​to your liking to see how your case changes.
Please select at least one farming activity.
Please specify an energy price.

Results

Key Figures

Payback period

Payback period

Annual energy saving

Technical Evaluation

Annual heat demand

Annual thermal energy yield per m2

Area of your STE system

Annual solar thermal energy yield

Annual required backup capacity

Annual thermal demand supplied by STE

Annual fuel saving

CO2 mitigation

Economic Evaluation

Total system cost

Amount of subsidy

Investment not covered by subsidy

Internal rate of return (IRR)

The size of your solar thermal installation

Your system will have 1 collectors. This will look something like this:

Monthly Thermal Energy Supply

Location selection

Please use this map to show your approximate location. We need this information in order to know how much sunlight you get per year. To select your location, use the marker option and place a single marker near your farm's address. Please note that only countries in North-West Europe are currently supported (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, The UK, Ireland)
If the map doesn't load automatically, click here:

Annual share of supply