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Design and optimization of the conventional heat pump with thermal energy storage for grid-interactive efficient buildings.

Number: 3463

Author(s) : LIU M., YANG Z., O’NEILL Z.

Summary

Buildings, as primary electricity consumers, have significant potential to provide flexibility on the demand side through their heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. Heat pump (HP) is the key HVAC technology for electrification and decarbonization in buildings. Combined with Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system, HP can offer demand flexibility through shifting electricity load to help alleviate grid stress at peak hours. Direct-expansion HPs are widely used in residential, and light commercial HVAC systems to directly supply conditioned air to the space. In this study, an integrated conventional heat pump-thermal energy storage (HP-TES) system is proposed. The demand flexibility potential of such system largely depends on the system design and the operational control of such a system. A Modelica-based virtual testbed was first developed for one HP-TES system. The building and HP-TES systems were then simulated in the Spawn of EnergyPlus environment, addressing buildings with various load profiles under different climatic conditions. Last, the optimal control of this HP-TES system was investigated.
As a case study, we implemented an economic model predictive control (MPC) strategy for Phase Change Material (PCM) based HP-TES system, aiming to minimize operation costs and power fluctuations while maintaining comfortable indoor temperatures. The simulation results show that the HP-TES system based on PCM thermal storage has significant potential in terms of effectiveness for the power system signal response capability and reduced operating cost. When the prediction horizon is less than 12 hours, the load shifting effect increases with the increase of the prediction horizon length, thereby reducing the system operating cost; when the prediction horizon is greater than 12 hours, the selected optimization solver cannot always guarantee the reduction of the operating cost due to the increase of the computational complexity. Based on these findings, we provide tailored recommendations for advanced control strategies applicable to conventional HP-TES systems. The established virtual testbed provides an avenue for a future extension, including explorations of state-of-art TES materials and investigations of aggregated control strategies for distributed HP-TES systems, with the objective of improving the building-to-grid integration.

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Pages: 10 p.

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  • Original title: Design and optimization of the conventional heat pump with thermal energy storage for grid-interactive efficient buildings.
  • Record ID : 30032929
  • Languages: English
  • Source: 2024 Purdue Conferences. 8th International High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue.
  • Publication date: 2024/07/15

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