The main aim of the project was to increase the knowledge of both academia and companies on how the control of systems with PV and heat pump can be optimized and how such systems can be tested in the lab so that the operational functionality can be verified, and performance determined in a quick efficient manner using a so called accelerated quasi-field testing of the whole system. Overall, this main aim has been achieved and Nibe has also decided to include some of the developed algorithms into the controllers of all their heat pump models. The test facility at the university has been upgraded in order to perform the complex whole system testing for PV and heat pump systems including thermal and electrical storage. It is one of only a few with this capability in the world.
It was decided to develop rule-base algorithms so that they could easily be implemented into the controllers that Nibe use in the products. Three algorithms using thermal storage were developed using system simulations of a typical compact exhaust air heat pump system in Swedish conditions (Psimopoulos et al., 2017; Psimopoulos et al., 2019), with the aim to reduce the operating costs for the owner:
• improved use of excess PV electricity,
• control using day ahead spot market prices, and
• control using predicted future PV electricity production.
In a second study a wide range of boundary conditions were used to study the variation of the impact of the developed algorithms due to country/climate, occupancy and appliance loads (Psimppoulos et al., 2020).
The dynamic whole system testing method was developed further from work in earlier projects. Two extensions were developed in order to test systems with advance control for:
• near-future electricity spot market prices; and
• using the building for thermal storage.
However, it requires a second test in order to determine the benefit of thermal storage in the building.
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