Paper No 343 – Performance of a State-of-Art Packaged Heat Pump for Residential Space Conditioning and Hot Water – 14th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Chicago, USA
Residential space conditioning and hot water loads in the US are typically decoupled and served by separate equipment. A residential home in four and above IECC climate zones can have two to three systems, typically a gas furnace for space heating, a gas-fired storage water heater, and an electric air conditioning (A/C) unit for space cooling. The decoupled nature of these individual systems prevents the units from working in a tandem nature, limiting the benefit of shared system costs and internal heat recovery. In addition, gas-fired furnaces and water heaters operate at less than 100% thermal efficiencies, insufficient for most CO2e emission reduction schemes. This manuscript summarizes data and key findings from the laboratory evaluation of a hybrid heat pump, a packaged Thermal Heat Pump (THP), and an Electrical Air Conditioning (EAC) unit for the combined operation of space conditioning and water heating. The packaged heat pump prototype achieved an AFUE of 121.6% and SEER of 8.