Novel approach for heating/cooling systems for buildings based on photovoltaic-heat pump: concept and evaluation

The paper presents the complete results regarding the energy performance and reliability of a new heating/cooling system designed and developed around an economic and ecological concept: self-consume a maximum amount of energy produced by solar photovoltaic panels. To achieve this goal, a unique regulation system which takes advantage of each kW produced by the PV system was developed and implemented. This technology, compared to a conventional system, increases the performance coefficient for the HP, as well as for the overall installation. These improvements are justified by the accurate regulation of different components of the installation - power modulation of the HP and circulation pumps-and by use of photovoltaic panels allowing a reduction of the electrical energy consumed from the grid. To quantify the contribution of the new system, the energy efficiency was established for the 2 cases: with and without solar PV panels. The results indicate that new system provides a significant gain in performance. This new technology, HP directly driven by PV, produces significant annual improvement compared with a conventional heating system, HP, of 22%. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.