Life cycle cost analysis of different residential heat pump systems

Abstract

Nowadays, the application of air-source heat pumps for heating and cooling in residential buildings has been increased significantly. The main occasion for this is the accessibility of a heat source for these devices - the external air. Nevertheless, the increase of the energy efficiency of the air source heat pump systems is a difficult design problem because their capacity and performance are a function of the dynamically changing parameters of the outdoor air. Because of that, the main aim of this study is to develop an approach for choosing a structural scheme of an air-to-water heat pump system under specific climatic conditions. The considered systems are monovalent, bivalent-parallel and bivalent-alternative heat pump systems. In the current paper is conducted a dynamic energy modeling of heating and cooling demand of a typical residential building situated in Varna, Bulgaria and applying the bin temperature data. It is assessed the effect of the heat pump capacity over the annual and seasonal energy performance of the heat pump systems. It is established the effect of the bivalent temperature, cut-off temperature and on-off cycles duration on rates of the criteria for techno-economic assessment. The seasonal coefficient of performance (SCOP), seasonal energy efficiency rate (SEER) and life cycle costs (LCC) of the analyzed heat pump systems are adopted as assessment parameters.