Development of Plug-and-play control strategies for buildings with heat pump systems and thermally activated components

Energy Audit & Energy Management Energy Innovations & Demonstration Projects Smart Cities & Energy Concepts Policy Advice & Energy Economics

The increasing use of energy from renewable energy sources requires greater balancing of production (local, regional and supra-regional) and consumption in the electricity grid. The use of heat pumps (HP) in combination with thermally activated building components (TABS) offers great potential for such load shifting, as they can store heating or cooling energy for longer periods due to their high thermal storage mass. Using suitable control strategies, this allows the heat pump to be operated flexibly in favour of increased use of renewable energy in the building. At the same time - on a large scale - there is significant potential for reducing the load on the electricity grid. The project thus makes a significant contribution to the integration of renewable energy and to reducing electricity consumption.

Client

Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH

Project status

completed

Project partner:

Forschung Burgenland GmbH
ruvi e.U.
teamgmi Ingenieurbüro GmbH
WEB Windenergie AG
Herz Energietechnik GmbH
Vereinigung der Österreichischen Zementindustrie

Cooperation partner:

Green Energy Lab

Project description

The widespread use of this concept is currently hampered by the lack of a widely applicable, standardised control strategy. The aim of this project was therefore to develop control strategies for heat pumps in combination with thermally activated components that can communicate with renewable energy generators inside or outside the building and optimise the provision of useful energy accordingly. The requirements of the indoor climate must always be complied with. Above all, the open source and plug-and-play approach (technology that allows external devices to be connected and used immediately with minimal effort) enables a wide range of applications.

Involvement of all partners to create a versatile solution

The active involvement of relevant companies such as heat pump manufacturers and energy supply companies, control engineers and building services planners as well as research institutions was essential from the outset. This ensured that the solution developed in the project could ultimately be integrated as open source code by interested control technology users.

The control strategies developed were integrated into several demonstration objects and tested in operation. At the same time, a platform known as a ‘Grid Data Manager’ was developed for ‘Grid Data Communication’. The Grid Data Manager is a centralised and automated software agent that is connected to all - verified and authenticated - participants in the electricity grid via encrypted connections (VPN) and exchanges data with them (grid data communication).

Data exchange via Grid Data Manager (current):

Weather data forecasts per location
Price signals from renewable energy suppliers
Forecast data for energy consumption
Potential for (electrical) load shifting

The software components required to implement grid data communication with the participants in the electricity grid are available for a proof of concept and are to be technically verified and validated in a next step with grid operators and energy suppliers.