29 January 2024
Annex 56 – Digitalization and IoT for Heat Pumps Task 1: State of the Art
Today, more and more devices are connected to the Internet and can interact due to increasing digitalization – the Internet of Things (IoT). In the energy transition, digital technologies are intended to enable flexible energy generation and consumption in various sectors, thus leading to greater use of renewable energies. This also applies to heat pumps and their components.
The IoT Annex explores the opportunities and challenges of connected heat pumps in household applications and industrial environment. There are a variety of new use cases and services for IoT enabled heat pumps. Data can be used for preventive analytics, such as what-if analysis for operation decisions, predictive maintenance, fine-tuning of the operation parameters and benchmarking. Connected heat pumps allow for demand response to reduce peak load and to optimize electricity consumption, e.g. as a function of the electricity price. Digitalization in industry can range from
automated equipment, advanced process control systems to connected supply value chains. IoT enabled heat pumps allow for integration in the process control system and into a high level energy management system, which can be used for overall optimization of the process. IoT is also associated to different important risks and requirements to connectivity, data analysis,
privacy and security for a variety of stakeholders. Therefore, this Annex has a broad scope looking at different aspects of digitalization and creates a knowledge base on connected heat pumps. The Annex
aims to provide information for heat pump manufacturers, component manufacturers, system integrators and other actors involved in IoT. The Annex is structured in 5 tasks:
Task 1 – State of the Art:
This task summarizes the state of the art and gives an overview on the industrial Internet of Things, communication technologies and knowledge engineering in automation. It reviews the status of currently available IoT enabled heat pumps, heat pump components and related services in the participating countries and provides information on information security and data protection.