heat pump

A new report from the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) has shown that heat pump technologies are currently unable to compete for heating with gas due to high taxes and levies on electricity. According to its experts, a carbon tax, or removing this tax imbalance, may create a level playing field for renewable technologies in the heating sector.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) showed, through a pilot incentive program, that whole-home heat pumps are a feasible solution for heating when switching from gas. Project costs, however, were found to be higher than expected.

Researchers in Spain have proposed two control strategies for the integration of heat pumps in district heating systems assisted by solar thermal collectors. Their technical-economic analysis shows that the proposed combination can reduce reliance on gas while also reducing costs.

According to a recent study, installing an air source heat pump may increase a home’s value by up to 7.1% in 23 states of the United States. The price premium is estimated at between $10,400 and $17,000 per transaction and the average cost for installing an air source heat pump is around $8,000.

A Norwegian consortium has built an industrial heat pump that can reach a temperature of up to 180 degrees Celsius. The machine can be used with different industrial processes that rely on steam as an energy carrier and can reduce a facility’s energy consumption by between 40% and 70%, as it enables the recovery of low-temperature waste heat.

Italian scientists have assessed the technical potential of vapor compression heat pumps assisted by photovoltaic-thermal systems. They analyzed two main configurations of this combination describing the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions. The cheapest and easiest to deploy system is a single-source direct-expansion (DX) configuration for hot water for space heating or domestic hot water.

The battery system, which is aimed at increased self-consumption, can handle a maximum DC input power of 18 kW and 1000 V.

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.

According to a new study from LUT University, domestic water heating costs may be reduced by combining rooftop PV with geothermal heat pumps. Scientists developed a control method to minimize these costs by taking advantage of cheap spot market electricity and maximized PV power generation, as well as considering heat demand, PV generation forecasts, and heat pump efficiency.