Workgroup Thermal energy systems

Our primary goal is to increase the efficiency of (solar-assisted) heat pump systems by intelligent integration of innovative heating circuit components and their control strategies. Thereby, we achieve a significant reduction of CO₂ emissions for heat supply, up to its complete avoidance. This requires a comprehensive understanding of the interactions of heat pumps, solar collectors, storage systems, domestic hot water heaters and conventional heat generators. The working group makes its systems expertise available to the entire department.

Solar-assisted heat pump systems

Systems with heat pumps are becoming increasingly important in the context of advancing sector coupling. Increasing efficiency and reducing costs by coupling shallow geothermal heat sources (borehole heat exchangers, horizontal ground heat exchangers) and solar thermal (e. g. PVT) heat generation, both on the source and sink side of the heat pump, has been a field of research and competence of the working group for years. The systems are particularly economically attractive for larger existing apartment blocks and for cold local district heating solutions on a neighbourhood scale.

Low-ex supply concepts in single and multi-family houses

Market-available as well as innovative heat supply systems for single- and multi-family houses are designed, evaluated with hardware-in-the-loop test methods in our laboratories, and analyzed in the field with cost-effective and minimally invasive measurement systems. A particular focus is on hygienic and efficient DHW heating with instantaneous water heaters. Detailed system simulations in TRNSYS are used to optimize the systems and generalize the results.