With a point of departure in 25 years of experience within the steam boiler industry, Aalborg CSP has developed advanced steam boiler systems to some of the world's largest solar power plants. Now the company has applied the international experience and knowhow to develop CSP plants for the production of emission free district heating.

The technology is known as concentrated solar power and is, for the production of district heating, a system of parabolic mirrors that concentrates the sun's rays onto a pipeline, which runs through the parabolic trough's burning point. The concentration of solar energy heats the water that is pumped through the pipes up to the desired temperature (80-95 degrees) and directly or indirectly into the district heating circuit.

The parabolic troughs use a custom designed sun tracking technology, where a computer calculates and calibrates the troughs into the required position for receiving the optimal radiation of sunrays throughout the day, opposed to the traditional solar panels that are mounted into a fixed position. The parabolic troughs can therefore deliver constant higher temperatures than solar panels.

Moreover, the parabolic troughs can defocus the energy if there is too much hot water in the storage tank in contrast to the solar panel systems where the district heating distributor is forced to pump cold water into the system when the storage tank is full. In this sense, there is therefore no energy loss.

The first CSP plant will be installed at Thisted Varmeforsyning, a district heating distributor which has won national and international recognition for being a pioneer in the field of producing emission free district heating. The CSP system will be launched in the beginning of 2012 and will deliver hot water with fixed prices for the consumers in the municipality of Thisted. The only overheads are self-evident installment payment and the very limited maintenance. One of the advantages of the CSP system is that consumers and distributors do not have to worry about rising fuel prices, as the fuel has been prepaid for the next 30 years with solar energy. The technology is therefore profitable for both the environment and the private economy and will become more so as time goes by.