Solar boosting of air source heat pumps

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

The world is in the midst of a global energy transition that has proven to be extremely challenging. In colder climates the use of energy to provide adequate indoor heating and cooling (during increasingly warm summers) is a major consumer of energy both domestically and in public buildings. Over the last decades the use of heat pumps have become common place, with especially air source heat pumps seeing a significant uptake. However these heat pumps suffer from poor performance at low outside temperatures, when heating demand is the greatest. Whilst heat pumps are currently well established, the use of solar panels for electricity production is on a steep upwards slope of adoption. Similar to heat pumps, solar panels also have a negative correlation with energy demand in colder climates, producing less energy (or none during night time) when heating demand is the greatest. In addition, solar panels still suffer from low efficiency (20%) compared with the total energy flux from the sun. The remaining 80% being converted to heat. The solution to break the day-night cycle conundrum is currently believed to be the use of battery storage to bridge the day-night cycle. However, doubts about safety, environmental impact and life-time cost of such batteries appears to be a major stumbling block for widescale adoption. This project aims to develop and promote an alternative solution that is safer, lower cost and more reliable by combining these two breakthrough technologies, heat pump and solar panels, in a unique synergistic manner.