SOLTRAIN Solar Thermal Project Support Scheme for Postgraduate Students

IMPORTANT

To apply for financial support, ALL of the following conditions must be met:

  1. You are a registered postgraduate student
  2. Your study area is solar thermal energy (see priority areas and abstracts from last year's successful applicants below)
  3. You are a citizen of Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa or Zimbabwe
  4. You will do the work for this project in the first half of 2022

Applications are currently closed but will open again later in 2022.

About the scheme

Thank you for your interest in the SOLTRAIN Student Project Support Scheme for postgraduate studies undertaken in the first half of 2022.

Students from all SOLTRAIN partner countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe) are invited to apply for funding of up to 2 500 Euro.

All postgraduate studies that deal with topics of solar thermal energy are eligible for funding. However, submissions on the topics listed below will be given priority.

1. Potential analysis for solar thermal systems in the South African and Mozambican health sector:

  • Survey of hospitals and clinics in the country or region, including the number of beds and the monthly average number of patients;
  • Calculation of hot water consumption in hospitals and clinics; and
  • Derivation of potential for thermal solar systems for the health sector in South Africa and Mozambique

2. Potential analyses for solar thermal systems at educational or social institutions (for example high school and student residences, orphanages and homes for retired people).

  • Calculation of hot water consumption and derivation of potential for solar thermal systems for the specific applications;
  • Calculation of potential electricity savings.

3. Potential analyses of solar thermal systems in the tourism sector

  • Definition of important tourism regions
  • Survey of beds and average number of tourists in the regions
  • Calculation of hot water consumption
  • Derivation of potential for solar thermal systems in the tourism sector

4. Analysis of measurement data from selected systems from the SOLTRAIN project:

  • Measurement data will be provided by SOLTRAIN;
  • Analysis of measured data with economic and/or technical input.

5. Any topics related to the use of solar thermal technologies for heating/drying/cooling in industrial applications.

6. Documentation and analysis of mass housing programmes with mandatory installation of solar water heaters (only Namibia and South Africa):

  • Documentation of the programme (location, number of houses, number and size of installed Solar Water Heaters)
  • Questionnaire based interviews with a significant number of users on the satisfaction with the Solar Water Heater;
  • Lessons learned;
  • Possible mass housing programmes for this survey: Namibia - NHE houses, OSONA village project / South Africa: 1 million solar water heater programme

Student abstracts from last year

Please have a look at some of the completed projects that were funded by SOLTRAIN in 2020/2021 (click to download in PDF format):

Applications for the current funding round are closed. Please follow us on Twitter for announcements about future rounds: https://twitter.com/SOLTRAIN_SADC

About SOLTRAIN

SOLTRAIN is a regional initiative on capacity building & demonstration of solar thermal systems in the SADC region. The aim of SOLTRAIN is to support the target countries in changing from a largely fossil energy supply system to a sustainable supply structure based on renewable energy in general, and on solar thermal in particular.

SOLTRAIN Country Partners