Our test plant DE01 is located on the experimental field of the TU Darmstadt. After successfully developing and testing a measuring system here in summer 2020, which will provide us with important data on the performance of the plant in the coming summers, the plant has now been sent into winter break: Different to our target countries such as Tanzania, the sun only shines for a few hours in winter in Germany, so that the DE01 plant cannot produce output over the winter and thus cannot provide usable measurement data. In order to protect the plant from sub-zero temperatures, ice, snow and wind, and related wear and tear during the winter months, it has now been made winter-proof by a small team.
For this purpose, the water was completely removed from the system, the sensitive parts of the measuring system were dismantled and the plant was covered to protect it from moisture. In this small video, the SoWaDi team introduces itself as it works to prepare the facility for winter. Unfortunately, the video is only available in German.
However, the fact that our plant is hibernating does not mean that our project group is also sleeping. In the summer, the new measurement system has already been used to collect a lot of data, which is now being evaluated by our performance group in order to make SoWaDi even more efficient in the future. In addition, we are currently working on new cooperations to spread our plant so that further test facilities can be built in Tanzania or other target countries in the coming year. Another test facility is also to be built in Darmstadt next spring. The construction of the second plant in Germany will be able to test further technical developments in real operation. For this purpose, technical changes are made to one of the two plants, and the performance is compared simultaneously with the unchanged reference system. This set-up is already being planned and prepared by our project group.
