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Large-scale heat pumps: market potential and barriers, classification and estimation of efficiency

Jesper, Mateo
Schlosser, Florian
Pag, Felix
Schmitt, Bastian
Walmsley, Timothy Gordon
Vajen, Klaus

Heat pumps powered by renewable electricity have a significant potential to become a critical technology to disruptively decarbonize an economy. An essential step towards this goal is the development of an accurate understanding and model of how heat pumps in large-scale implementations perform in terms of economics, energy, and the environment. In this study, the influence of system design and operating conditions on the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of large-scale (> 50 kWth) electric driven mechanical compression heat pumps is reviewed, leading to a methodology to estimate a heat pump’s performance depending on the operating conditions. An overview of the potential scale, market size and barriers for large-scale heat pumps with a focus on applications in industry, commerce and district heating systems is given. The review underscores the knowledge gap in the area of large-scale heat pumps including their lack of performance testing standards given the large window of operating conditions as well as meaningful application possibilities. Transferring a significant and reliable dataset to practitioners (e.g. energy-managers and consultants) can close this knowledge gap. Therefore, this study assembles a comprehensive dataset for the system configuration and performance of 33 large-scale heat pumps from 11 different manufacturers and addresses three main objectives: (1) Classifying and evaluating the capabilities of market available heat pumps. (2) Modelling the correlation between the COP and the operating conditions. (3) Developing an economic and ecological evaluation method for a heat pump project. Applying the developed models to accurately assess real-world performance and build a sound business case for large-scale heat pumps has the potential to accelerate the uptake of renewable energy and help improve overall environmental sustainability.

Sponsor
This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy within the framework of the 6th Energy Research Program [project: “SolarAutomotive”, grant number 0325863A].
Collections
@article{doi:10.17170/kobra-202103103481,
  author    ={Jesper, Mateo and Schlosser, Florian and Pag, Felix and Schmitt, Bastian and Walmsley, Timothy Gordon and Vajen, Klaus},
  title    ={Large-scale heat pumps: market potential and barriers, classification and estimation of efficiency},
  keywords ={333 and 620 and Wärmepumpe and Hochtemperatur and Stand der Technik and Wirtschaftlichkeit and Energieeffizienz and Großanlagenbau},
  copyright  ={http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/},
  language ={en},
  year   ={2019-12-20}
}