British Library Turns to Solar Thermal to Preserve Shakespeare’s First Folio

(Bloomberg) -- The British Library has some valuable charges to keep safe – Shakespeare’s First Folio, two copies of the Magna Carta and manuscripts by Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë.

Now those treasures have been entrusted to a new solar thermal system that maintains the right temperature and humidity levels to preserve the library’s historic books, by using heat from the system to control the amount of moisture absorbed by silica dehumidifiers while cutting its annual carbon emissions by 55 metric tons.

The £1.5 million ($2 million) installation by the British firm Naked Energy is the largest in the UK. It generates 216 megawatt-hours of energy annually, reducing the library’s draw from the grid and cutting reliance on gas boilers, previously used for heating the sprawling central London building which houses some 170 million items over 14 floors and last year received around 1.4 million visitors.

Solar thermal technology, which captures heat from the sun and uses it for space heating and hot water, differs from solar photovoltaic, which captures energy from sunlight, and is the predominant type of solar energy worldwide. As of last year, installed solar thermal capacity globally was around 560 gigawatts, compared to 1,500 gigawatts of solar PV. Naked Energy has a type of solar collector which can produce power at the same time as heat, which it says is unique.

“It was a very complex project because the British Library is a very unique building,” said Christophe Williams, founder and CEO of Naked Energy, in an interview with Bloomberg Green. “There is a huge heat demand in the building because they have a lot of hot water.”

The 950 solar thermal cylinders, which cover 712.5 square meters of the library’s roof, are also less obtrusive than solar panels would have been, Williams added, making them more acceptable to planning authorities. The British Library is a listed building, with tight restrictions on modifications and additions that affect how it looks.

The system, installed 18 months ago as part of a wider project overhauling and extending the building which has housed the library’s collection since 1998, was paid for through a government scheme which helps fund the decarbonization of public buildings.