Solar Thermal Assisted Heat Pump Water Heaters

The goal of the project is to decrease residential energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions using a heat pump water heater (which uses a refrigeration cycle) in combination with a solar collector. Coupling the heat pump with a solar collector allows an increase for the feasibility by getting rid of that space heating increase.

Important factors are energy performance and economic performance of the water heaters and the solar connected water heaters.

The system was tested at different air conditions (flow rates, temperatures, humidities) to characterize the heat pump water conditions, and then experiments were run under air conditions that simulated solar collector outlet temperatures, and used those to validate the TRNSYS model.
The model was tested in various cities across Canada and the United States to illustrate performance variations in terms of energy greenhouse gas emissions, and economics.