Solar-thermal energy

Solar collectors are almost unheard of, even thoe the climate is mild enough for large solar fractions to cover the heating bill. The picture shows an experimental unit made with only local supplies. We believe we can produse these localy at a resonable cost. As in any design or new construction there are compromises and these criterias are set to guide us in the development. It is possible to end up with a very good system that just a few can afford, we could still might have a great buisness, but then the environmental impact would be small. Our dream is to see these around everywhere around here, and therefore it is crusial that we devlop it under criterias guided by our local knowledge.

• Price equal to two year payback potential. ( 500 manat for a small system for domestic hotwater)
• Made of local available materials.
• Manifacture as much as we can of it in sothern Azerbaijan.
• A simple design
• A robust design
• An estetic design (in Azerbaijan people are in general more conserned with appearence than in feks. scandinavia)

This is not a complete list, some would might ask:

“Why isnt high efficency in that list?”

simply because it is not our main priority. Solar collector design can improove efficency by using more expensive materials. But with price beeing such a big deal we can rather increase the effect of a solar collector simply by adding square meeters. So spending a lot of money to increase efficency dosent make sence if  the cost for adding 10% area costs much less. Solar collectors have been developed before, so there is nothing new to it, the difficult thing is to make it cheap enough and simple enough so that it can be a “nobrainer” to implement it when you are planing to build your house. It is at that point our company have the desired effect. So our main challenge in this is not to make it work, but to balance our criterias and do our compromises well so we get a product that will be selling enough to make an impact.

“Why not import something from china or Iran?”

This has been concidered, and we might still do so. But at this point there seem to be enough good reasons to do avoid it:

• The pricetag is to high (1000 manat and up)
• They will not be easy to maintain and tend to be more sofisticated.
• It will generate less local jobs.
• It will not contribute less to local knowledge and knowhow.
• Importing stuff to Azerbaijan is in general not at all effortless.
• Most of them dosent look nice.