heating

According to a Swedish-Austrian group of scientists, the combined use of heat pumps and rooftop PV generation may be boosted in Europe by replacing current subsidies with a carbon tax policy. Their analysis showed that the profitability of this combination is strictly dependent on gas prices, and that a slight increase in gas prices would be crucial to sustain strong development.

The Scottish government wants to deploy renewable-powered heat pumps on at least 1 million homes and 50,000 non-domestic buildings by the end of this decade. For this purpose, it has created an advisory group and is now seeking to gather all potential stakeholders.

Building renovations may result in up to 51% space heating demand savings, according to recent research from Germany. Its authors claim that, if buildings are retrofitted and thermal energy storage and individual hybrid heat pumps with back-up gas boilers are applied on a large scale, significant heat cost reduction may be achieved across the whole of Europe.

The Polish government is supporting a hybrid renewable energy project based on a deep-borehole heat exchanger (DBHE) whose heat pumps are powered by photovoltaics. The heat generated by the facility will be used for district heating.

Swedish energy company Vattenfall is planning to build a 150 MW electric boiler near Amsterdam under the Netherlands’ SDE+ program for large scale renewables. The facility is planned to operate when a lot of electricity from wind and sun is available and to supply hot water to households in the city and its surrounding areas.

German scientists have outlined a model to combine hydrogen storage with conventional battery storage in high-efficient energy buildings powered uniquely by photovoltaics. In the proposed configuration, the DC power of the PV system is connected directly to the hybrid hydrogen system, a lithium-ion battery, an electric water heater, and an inverter, which in turn would provide AC current to the household and a heat pump.

Danish gas transmission system operator Evida will exempt homeowners and individuals that want to abandon gas and choose renewable energy for heating from paying the grid disconnection fee. The scheme will be run on a first-come, first-served basis.

Researchers in Spain have compiled a list of key performance indicators intended at evaluating not only the quality of a heat pump or a PV generator; but also the quality of their integration. pv magazine spoke to research co-author Celena Lorenzo about the potential and challenges of this combination. According to her, heat pumps powered by PV alone are efficient enough for both cooling and heating.

The German companies are developing an intelligent energy solution for heating, hot water, energy management and solar power generation in a single coordinated system.