The period 2017 – 2018

An important deliverable is the final Task 1 report including an overview of policies in the various countries and the market developments starting from the existing domestic hot water systems, energy use and use of hot water, toward expected future markets. A scenario has been developed leading to a need for future developments from the smart market perspective of an all-electric society.

An important conclusion is that the use of hot water is a fairly unknown figure, therewith creating uncertainty for the overall design of a domestic hot water system. In most cases it is inevitable that capacities are too large and storage tanks up to 50 – 100% oversized giving unnecessary energy losses and relatively low overall SPF’s. Good and well-designed systems can already have SPF’s of 4.0 for domestic hot water heat pumps.

The final efficiency of DHW HP’s is dependent on more than the stand alone HP itself. Task 2 is focusing on the difference the system configurations on order to be able to give general guidelines for optimization.

An overview of R&D in the participating countries and other non-participating countries like China, Germany. Austria and Sweden is being prepared under Task 4 of the Annex and will be discussed in a workshop in the first half of 2018. Two important levels of R&D are discerned, being:

  • R&D at institutes and universities with a longer term focus and often more fundamental
  • Development with heat pump manufacturers, more focused on the direct and competitive focus of the market needs.

A number of countries, like USA, do have a very focused governmental R&D program on domestic hot water heat pumps.