Innovation fund - Aspiring Campervan Park, Wanaka

The Aspiring Campervan Park in Wanaka is doing their bit to maintain New Zealand's clean green image. The Campervan Park has installed a large evacuator tube solar water heating system onto its ablution block and a small system on the manager's accommodation.

The camp uses approximately 1,400 litres of hot water a day and previously used diesel for most hot water heating. The park is hoping to drastically reduce this usage with their new solar water heating system. The owners estimate that they may reduce diesel usage by 13.5 MWh and save 2.4MWh of electricity annually.

The ablution block uses a 2700L outdoor cylinder that will act as a solar pre-heater for the two existing hot water cylinders. The use of a pre-heater cylinder will allow the most solar gain but yet allow the camping ground to maintain sufficient hot water for demand. The Alpha Solar evacuator tube system has a 29.7m² collector area with two blocks of panels facing east and north-west so that they can gain maximum benefit all year round for sunlight hours per day.

The Campervan Park has installed their solar water heating system both to save money on energy costs which have doubled in recent years and to satisfy the demand of the international and domestic tourism market to be more sustainable in their operations.

Results will be made available when the monitoring of this project is complete.