Interest in solar district heating is growing in Germany. A map by German research organisation Solites shows the systems currently in operation to be 23 totalling 49,600 m² of collector area (34.7 MWth). Last year saw the addition of four installations with a combined area of 12,921 m²; one of them was Germany’s first record-size solar district heating plant in 11 years, in Senftenberg. Solites has now developed a tool to calculate the yield of SDH plants. Called SCFW 2.0 (ScenoCalc Fernwärme 2.0), it is available as a free download at
www.scfw.de and is hoped to increase transparency by improving the comparability of solar district heating plants and solutions.