Solar process heat — SHIP, Solar Heat for Industrial Processes — is the use of solar thermal collectors to supply industrial heat for washing, drying, pasteurisation and boiler feed-water preheating. At least 1,315 SHIP plants totalling roughly 1,071 MWth operated worldwide at the end of 2024, and about 30% of industrial heat demand sits below 150 °C — the range standard collectors serve best.
What is solar process heat?
Solar process heat means solar thermal collectors supplying a factory's heat demand instead of — or alongside — gas, oil or electric boilers. Heat is the sleeping giant of industrial energy: roughly two-thirds of industry's final energy demand is heat, not electricity or motion, and much of it at surprisingly modest temperatures. Washing and cleaning, pasteurising, drying, dyeing and preheating boiler feed water all run below the temperatures a good collector reaches routinely. The sector abbreviation SHIP (Solar Heat for Industrial Processes) covers everything from a dairy's rooftop field to concentrating plants delivering industrial steam.
Which processes and temperatures suit solar heat?
The decisive question is process temperature: about 30% of industrial heat demand sits below 150 °C and roughly half below 400 °C, and each band maps to a collector technology.
| Temperature band | Typical processes | Collector technology |
|---|---|---|
| Below 100 °C | Washing, cleaning, feed-water preheat, space heating | Flat-plate collectors |
| 100–150 °C | Pasteurisation, cooking, drying, sterilisation | Evacuated tube and high-performance flat plates |
| 150–400 °C | Steam networks, thermal oil, distillation | Concentrating collectors (trough, Fresnel) |
Food and beverage leads adoption for exactly this reason — dairies, breweries and meat processors run dozens of sub-100 °C processes with year-round, seven-day demand profiles that soak up every solar kilowatt-hour.
How big is the SHIP market?
Still a niche, but a compounding one. By the end of 2024 at least 1,315 SHIP plants were operating worldwide, with a combined capacity of about 1,071 MWth across roughly 1.53 million m² of collectors; 106 plants were added in 2024 alone, with China the largest market. Project developers have announced a further 73 plants totalling 277 MW for completion by 2027. Against the size of industrial heat demand this is a rounding error — which is precisely the argument investors hear: the addressable market is orders of magnitude larger than the installed base.
How is solar heat integrated into a factory?
The golden rule is to feed heat in at the lowest useful temperature, because a collector's output falls as its operating temperature rises — the physics captured in the collector efficiency curve. Preheating boiler feed water or make-up water is the classic entry point: the solar field always works against the coldest stream in the plant and every kilowatt-hour displaces fuel. Process-level integration — heating a specific bath, washer or dryer loop — comes next, followed by supply-level integration into steam or hot water networks. Buffer storage decouples the solar noon peak from shift patterns, and heat exchangers keep the solar circuit separate from process media. Design solar fractions of 10–30% of annual process heat are typical without seasonal storage.
What makes a strong SHIP business case?
Five ingredients recur in successful plants: a process below about 150 °C, heat demand across at least six days a week and ideally all year, expensive displaced fuel such as LPG, oil or electricity, available roof or adjacent land, and a plant owner planning in decades rather than quarters. Rising carbon costs strengthen the case across the EU as emissions pricing reaches further into heat supply. Collector manufacturers with industrial references — Solimpeks among them, serving customers in 96+ countries from Konya — supply the flat-plate fields that dominate the sub-100 °C band where most SHIP projects begin, and the same engineering scales from a hotel laundry to solar district heating fields.
Frequently asked questions
What solar fraction can a factory realistically achieve?
Typically 10–30% of annual process heat without seasonal storage — sized so summer output never exceeds demand. Low-temperature processes with continuous, seven-day operation sit at the top of that range; batch operations with weekend shutdowns at the bottom.
Which industries use solar process heat the most?
Food and beverage is the leading sector — dairies, breweries, slaughterhouses — followed by textiles, chemicals and mining. Their advantage is many processes below 100 °C and heat demand in every month of the year.
Does SHIP require special collectors?
Below about 100 °C, standard certified flat-plate collectors do the job; from 100–150 °C evacuated tube or high-efficiency flat plates take over, and above 150 °C concentrating collectors such as parabolic troughs or Fresnel systems are required.
Is solar process heat proven at industrial scale?
Yes — more than 1,300 documented plants operate worldwide, from small rooftop fields to multi-megawatt installations, and the AEE INTEC SHIP database records their configurations and performance publicly. The technology risk is low; the design work lies in integration.