Abstract
Cascade air-to-water heat pumps have better overall efficiency than single-stage air-to-water heat pumps when operating at low ambient temperatures for high temperature water supply. While many studies in the literature investigated the specific features of equipment performance of cascade heat pumps, there is little information about retrofit applications of these heat pumps in residential buildings using experimentally validated dynamic building simulations. In this study, the techno-economic assessment of a variable capacity cascade air-to-water heat pump retrofitted into residential buildings is conducted by means of experimentally validated TRNSYS simulations. The cascade heat pump coupled with thermal energy storage operating in different scenarios is further studied. Laboratory and field trial results were obtained to develop and validate a cascade heat pump model integrated with a dynamic building simulation model. Regarding the heat pump system without storage, the predicted annual COPs were almost below 2.5 at ambient temperatures of from −11.2 °C to 29.5 °C, even the heat pump adopted weather compensation control. Simulation results also indicated that the cascade heat pump could not defeat gas boilers and high-efficiency oil boilers (90%) in terms of operating costs, but there were CO2 reductions (from 14% to 57%). As for the heat pump coupled with storage, simulation results showed that at ambient temperatures of between −5.6 °C and 23.8 °C, the continuous coupling between the heat pump and the storage revealed the lowest annual performance (actual COP of 1.41), while the direct heating obtained the highest efficiency (actual COP of 2.12) followed by the load-shifting (actual COP of 1.88).
Highlights
In the European Union, buildings accounted for about 40% of the energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions [1]
TRNSYS dynamic building simulations based on the laboratory and field results were used to assess the annual techno-economic performance of a cascade AWHP (CAWHP) when retrofitted into a typical single-family house in different locations across the UK
The performance of the retrofit CAWHP coupled with thermal energy storage (TES) in varied system configurations was highlighted
Summary
In the European Union, buildings accounted for about 40% of the energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions [1]. Using single-stage AWHPs as a retrofit alternative is unlikely to be a feasible solution in practice This is because 35% of the EU’s buildings [1] and 27.5 million UK’s residential houses [15] are ageing, heavily relying on conventional boilers with high temperature (over 60°C) heating distribution systems (wet radiator systems) to supply space and hot water heating demands. Cascade AWHPs may be a potential solution for retrofit application in the UK since they can directly replace existing boilers without the requirement of considerable modifications to the heat distribution systems, thereby reducing installation costs and disruptions compared to single-stage AWHPs. The number of studies on cascade AWHPs for space and hot water heating has increased recently, according to the extensive reviews of Chua et al [20], Willem et al [21] and Zhang et al [22]. The following sections explain in detail how this research was carried out
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