World’s largest adsorption solar cooling installation

Austrian company SOLID has installed a solar cooling for Desert Mountain High School, in Scottsdale, Arizona, a city in the Greater Phoenix area which enjoys 312 days of sun annually.
The Valley of the Sun is one of the hottest areas in the United States with summer temperatures climbing to 40°C or above. Austrian company SOLID has installed a solar cooling for Desert Mountain High School, in Scottsdale, Arizona, a city in the Greater Phoenix area which enjoys 312 days of sun annually.

The project, initially launched in the summer of 2011, now keeps 2,600 students cool thanks to a 4,865 m² collector area and a 1,750 kW capacity cooling system, making it the most powerful solar-cooling plant of its kind. A lithium-bromide adsorption chiller operates on full load during the hottest hours of the day. In the summer, it covers 100% of the cooling demand and back-up electric chillers step in when required.

The total cost of the installation amounts to around 10mn USD (8.5mn euro) and was partly financed thanks to Solid Invest, a new fundraising model by which private investors can lend money and receive a fixed interest of 4% and mostly also by the Raiffeisen US Finance Bank.