Apricus Australia’s solar hot water products are increasingly appearing in commercial scale installations across the country.
Apricus recently announced its solar hot water products were used in an installation at Newcastle University to service an extension to the Medical Sciences Faculty.
The building’s annual water heating related electricity requirements is 18,300 kWh. The Apricus evacuated tube solar thermal system was configured to contribute 14,521 kWh; resulting in approximately 79% reduction in mains-supplied energy consumption for the building’s hot water needs.
The system is comprised of 300 evacuated tubes, 10 Apricus AP-30 Collectors, cyclone rated pitching frames to suit, 8 x 315 stainless steel hot water storage tanks and 3 Bosch gas boosters.
An even larger installation is now in operation at the De Bortoli Winery in Griffith, New South Wales. 3,000 Apricus solar tubes connected to 100 Apricus AP30 manifolds are pre-heating 12,000 litres of capacity in two custom-made 6,000 litres hot water storage tanks for De Bortoli’s new bottling plant.
The De Bortoli system is expected to reduce the company’s water heating costs by more than 80 per cent annually and during summer, 100 per cent.
Solar hot water has been a popular choice for households for many years and increasingly businesses are seeing the benefits of having their water heated courtesy of the sun.
Evacuated tube systems such as Apricus offers are considered superior to flat plate collectors. Among the many advantages, due to the vacuum inside the glass tube, the total efficiency in all areas is higher and there’s better performance when the sun is not at an optimum angle – such as early in the morning or in the late afternoon.
Beginning as a small home-based operation in Sydney in 2003, Apricus has rapidly grown into a global company with offices in the USA, Australia and France and now supplies to more than 30 countries.
