Paper No 1013 – HpCosy – Heat Pump Comfort System – 14th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Chicago, USA
In the project HpCosy the base for a decentralized brine-water heat pump system for flats in multi-family houses is developed and investigated. It encompasses the functions heating, cooling and domestic hot water preparation. Its control shall enable the consideration of availability of on-site produced photovoltaic electricity as a single unit within a swarm of all heat pumps within the building. The comparison between a centralized and several decentralized heat pump systems clearly shows great advantages of the decentralized solutions (savings up to 31% of electric energy). However, the largest share of the energy saved is due to the elimination of DHW circulation. The measurement of a HpCosy-unit in realistic and dynamic working conditions showed that an individual adjustment of the control of the individual swarm participants in response to a swarm signal is technically feasible and already leads to a reduction of the grid consumption in the selected and tested week. The final simulations of the overall system show that - in addition to the savings achieved through the use of decentralized systems - an additional reduction in grid consumption of up to 5% can be achieved by increasing self-consumption by 11% to 17% with a swarm signal, indication whether there is a positive on-site energy production or not.