Prime Laser Technology SA

PLT

Developing and manufacturing products and technologies for solar thermal and heating and cooling.

Lobbying Activity

Response to EU Solar Energy Communication

12 Apr 2022

EU solar strategy should equally include solar thermal. Current policies and proposals are in favor of electrification and biased overlooking lower cost and more realistic solutions from direct renewable heat technologies. Such policies create unfair competition for the solar thermal industry which is based on European SMEs and technology. Roof limitations of buildings can prevent the installation of enough collector area to cover the energy needs for heat, DHW, and electricity. In this case, solar thermal should be installed as a priority. Direct renewable heat is more efficient and is always combined with heat battery (storage). Apart from District Heating cases, solar thermal can't be utilized remotely as PV. Batteries and PV are much cheaper in large scale than small on buildings. To balance this, citizens should be offered the opportunity to invest in a PV field and electric storage getting the same benefits as if they were installing PV on the roof. Electric utilities are already offering similar contracts. Research and Innovation funds should be available also for solar thermal. Digitalisation, hybrid systems, standardisation and certification must be addressed in EU solar strategy for both PV and solar thermal. Industrial solar thermal applications for low and medium temperatures and PV or CSP for high temperatures. Industries and businesses should be allowed to invest in large PV or CSP fields, grid-connected, benefiting from favorable and transparent transmission costs.
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Response to Methodology for calculating the quantity of renewable energy used for cooling and district cooling

25 Nov 2021

Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment on the proposed regulation. Greece is considered as one of the main markets for cooling. Regarding the energy consumption for cooling is only fifth after Italy, Spain, France and almost equal to Germany. The market for the residential and service sector is mainly by split airconditioners. More than 80% of them are considered reversible heat pumps. As air to air heat pumps, type of split units, are affordable (cost 400-800 €), is becoming a commodity improving quality of life. A very large percentage of those are used only rarely. My estimation is that they are used only 10% of what they are supposed as equivalent hours full load hours (EFLH). The proposed calculation is not taking into account that, resulting in exploding cooling energy consumption. A factor adjusting the equivalent hour of operation should be included. Probably the value of the factor should result from statistics after measuring of actual use of cooling systems per category. In item 21 of the regulation should be added something like 'or factor of actual operation'.
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Response to Action plan on the digitalisation of the energy sector

10 Sept 2021

PRIME LASER TECHNOLOGY is an SME active in Solar Thermal. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the consultation. Digitalisation of Energy Action Plan will help to accelerate the energy transition. We believe that this offers an opportunity to promote digitalisation of Renewable heating technologies allowing new business models, via smart metering, to offer reliable and competitive solutions addressing heat a major part of the energy consumption. Further thermal storage component or Renewable Heating and Cooling systems can play a significant role in smart grid flexibility. Thus, focus should not be placed only on electricity and energy carriers but also on decentralised direct production of renewable heat.
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Response to Revision of the Energy Tax Directive

19 Jul 2021

VAT on electricity and natural gas in Greece is only 6%, while VAT for solar thermal is 24%. This preferential treatment gives the wrong signal about energy use and it has a larger negative impact than the proposed taxation. Member states should cancel any preferential tax treatment of fossil fuels and electricity.
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Meeting with Nicolas Schmit (Commissioner) and

11 May 2021 · Pact for Skills roundtable with the renewable energies ecosystem sector.

Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and Eurelectric aisbl and

11 May 2021 · Pact for Skills roundtable with the renewable energies ecosystem sector

Response to Union Renewable Development Platform (URDP)

1 May 2021

In article 6, the number of persons authorised to have access to the URDP, should be limited (i.e. minimum 3, maximum 10). Further, they should be announced also publicly.
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Response to Offshore renewable energy strategy

19 Jul 2020

1. LCOE is not useful when assessing the costs of an energy system powered mainly from renewables. Wind and sunshine are intermittent resources that do not correlate perfectly with demand. The intermittency brings additional costs which are not included. The total cost of energy as service should be calculated and used. This would allow comparing decentralized heating renewables as solar thermal with central and more complex alternatives. For example what would be the total cost per kWh for Domestic hot water in a Greek island coming from a floating offshore wind park producing hydrogen via electolysers, including storage, interconnection and grid flexibility cost? How can we prevent to replace a European made renewable technology, as solar thermal, with a current cost of less than 30 €/MWh, by a much more expensive alternative? The energy system in 2050 should be hybrid, composing from electric and non-electric renewables. Policy should prioritize the use of such decentralized technologies to avoid cannibalization of renewables. 2. To support and strengthen the EU industry and technology in this sector, to be based on a domestically-based production, participation to EU funded R&I and dissemination projects should include criteria ensuring that production of participants is European based and commitment to continue to be like that for a period of time (i.e. 5 years) after the completion of the project.
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Response to EU Methane Strategy

12 Jul 2020

Methane emissions from oil and natural gas supply chain should be estimated by using combined methods as ground-based, facility-scale measurements, and validated with aircraft observations. Special attention should be paid to emissions released during abnormal operating conditions. Methane emissions, per unit of natural gas consumed, produce radiative forcing over a 20-year time horizon comparable to the CO2 from natural gas combustion. Substantial emission reductions are feasible through rapid detection of the root causes of high emissions and deployment of less failure-prone systems. A system of scoring emissions depending on the supply chain would help consumers choosing suppliers and authorities to impose limits on emissions or penalize extreme emissions. This system could have also a positive impact on methane produced by renewables.
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