Abstract
Advanced control of heat pumps with thermal storage and photovoltaics has recently been promoted as a promising solution to help decarbonise the residential sector. Heat pumps and thermal storage offer a valuable flexibilisation mean to integrate stochastic renewable energy sources into the electricity grid. Heat pump energy conversion is nonlinear, leading to a challenging nonlinear optimisation problem. However, issues like global optimum uncertainty and the time-consuming methods of current nonlinear programming solvers draw researchers to linearise heat pump models that are then implemented in faster and globally convergent linear programming solvers. Nevertheless, these linearisations generate some inaccuracies, especially in the calculation of the heat pump’s coefficient of performance ( C O P ). In order to solve all of these issues, this paper presents a heuristic control algorithm (HCA) to provide a fast, accurate and near-optimal solution to the original nonlinear optimisation problem for a single-family house with a photovoltaic system, using real consumption data from a typical Swiss house. Results highlight that the HCA solves this optimisation problem up to 1000 times faster, yielding an operation that is up to 49% cheaper and self-consumption rates that are 5% greater than other nonlinear solvers. Comparing the performance of the HCA and the linear solver intlinprog, it is shown that the HCA provides more accurate heat pump control with an increase of up to 9% in system Operating Expense OPEX and a decrease of 8% in self-consumption values.
Highlights
The implementation of heat pumps (HP) with thermal energy storage (TES) appears to be a promising solution to meet the demand for hot water while promoting an efficient and low-carbon energy network [1]
Research regarding optimal control of heat pumps applied to residential energy systems is becoming a relevant topic in recent years
A novel heuristic control algorithm (HCA) is developed to optimise HP management with very little computational efforts by enhancing PV self-consumption while minimising the operating costs of a typical Swiss single-family house equipped with a 1-kW variable-speed air-to-water heat pump (AWHP), a 600-L domestic hot water (DHW) storage unit and a 3-kWp PV system
Summary
The implementation of heat pumps (HP) with thermal energy storage (TES) appears to be a promising solution to meet the demand for hot water while promoting an efficient and low-carbon energy network [1]. Smart technologies offer the possibility of optimising heat pump scheduling coupled with TES, allowing for increased integration of decentralised renewable electricity generation into the grid. This would reduce the need for expensive grid reinforcements and would reduce residential energy expenditures [2,3,4]. Research regarding optimal control of heat pumps applied to residential energy systems is becoming a relevant topic in recent years. Heuristic control strategies offer the Energies 2019, 12, 1571; doi:10.3390/en12081571 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
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