BUILDING CONTROLS & TECHNOLOGY
How smart controls can transform heat pump efficiency
While significant progress has been made in reducing emissions from power generation and transportation, heating continues to lag behind. With heating responsible for a substantial 18% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, identifying and implementing effective solutions is not just important - it’s critical to achieving climate goals, according to Will Heinzelmann, product director at Passiv UK
O
ne promising solution is the adoption of heat pumps, whether installed individually outside homes or as part of larger, centralised
heat networks. This approach is good but decarbonisation with heat pumps depends on their ability to run efficiently. Heat pumps are typically very efficient - a new gas boiler will have an efficiency of 85% if it’s set up correctly but a heat pump can have an efficiency of well over 300%. That’s great in practice, but why is it that heat pumps sometimes fall short of these high efficiency ratings? One of the biggest challenges in heat pump installation is setting the correct flow temperature - the temperature of the water that travels from the heat pump to your radiators. The lower the flow temperature, the less hard the heat pump has to work and the more efficient it will be. Currently, about a third of heat pumps are installed with a fixed flow temperature, which is simple to set up but can be disastrous for efficiency. The remaining two-thirds use a weather compensation curve which is set by the installer and controls the flow temperature based on the outdoor temperature. While this is better, it’s not foolproof. The weather compensation curve doesn’t change if they get it wrong and it doesn’t adjust to new information. Nor can it look at weather forecasts or factor in how the homeowner uses their heating system. So, it’s better than using a fixed flow temperature - but we can do better. This is where smart controls come in. The latest generation of smart heat pump controls can make heat pumps a lot easier to install by completely removing the need for an installer to set a weather compensation curve. Instead, they directly control the heat pump’s flow temperature, constantly adjusting the weather
34 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER NOVEMBER 2024 Read the latest at:
www.bsee.co.uk
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