HITACHI is the latest company to join the drive for solar-powered air conditioning. Hitachi group subsidiary Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd has is reported to have developed a solar activated air conditioning system employing its own solar energy collector.
The system will be promoted for use in commercial buildings or district cooling facilities in the sunshine belts of the Mediterranean, the interior of North America, Western Asia, and Australia. The company is predicting sales of up to £40m by 2015.

Hitachi Plant Technologies has considerable experience in a wide range of plants employing solar energy for power and heating.

This system is designed to drive an absorption chiller directly with thermal energy generated from the solar energy collector to obtain chilled water for air conditioning. As the key to this system, Hitachi Plant Technologies developed its own sun-tracking parabola trough-type solar energy collector.