Friends, the unseasonably warm autumn has meant that I have had to wait until 23rd October for our 5 kW Vaillant Arotherm plus system to switch itself on.
I only have a couple of day’s data, but the results are interesting and promising. First I will show the data for each day and then discuss what it means at the end.
23rd October 2021
Click image for a larger version. The graph shows electrical power consumed by the heat pump and the thermal power delivered by the pump during the 24 hours of 23rd October 2021.
From midnight until 6 a.m., there is no space heating, but the heat pump operates for 1 hour to heat the domestic hot water (DHW) tank. Performance for hot water heating is described in these articles (1, 2)
From 6 a.m. until midnight the system is responding to the thermostat set at 19.5 °C and heated water is circulated around the radiators.
The heat pump operates 12 times up until 6 p.m. after which no additional heating was required.
As shown on the graph,12.1 kWh of heat was delivered using only 2.9 kWh of electrical power. which over 12 hours amounts to an average heating power of around 1 kW using only 250 W of electrical power.
The ratio of thermal to electrical power is known as the coefficient of performance (COP) and this is summarised in the graph below
Click image for a larger version. The graph shows Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the heat pump during the 24 hours of 23rd October 2021.
The COP seems to increase slowly through the day peaking for a few minutes in each cycle at values as high as 6, but the space heating average is 4.2.
Click image for a larger version. The graph shows various temperatures relevant to heat pump operation during the 24 hours of 23rd October 2021. The external temperature; the internal temperature; the flow temperature in the radiators; the temperature of water in the DHW cylinder.
The initial flow temperature is ~34 °C which falls through the day to ~28 °C. This reduction in flow temperature is in response to the increase in external temperature from ~12 °C to ~15 °C.
This so-called ‘weather compensation’ allows the use of lower flow temperatures, which enables the system to operate with the highest possible COP.
I was surprised that even with my unaltered radiators, flow temperatures of 35 °C were sufficient to warm the house.
24th October 2021
Here is the equivalent data to that for the 23rd – the graphs are similar and I show them only to show that the system seems to be behaving reproducibly.
Click image for a larger version. The graph shows electrical power consumed by the heat pump and the thermal power delivered by the pump during the 24 hours of 24th October 2021.
Click image for a larger version. The graph shows Coefficient of Performance (COP)of the heat pump during the 24 hours of 24th October 2021.
Click image for a larger version. The graph shows various temperatures relevant to heat pump operation during the 24 hours of 24th October 2021. The external temperature; the internal temperature; the flow temperature in the radiators; the temperature of water in the DHW cylinder.
Conclusions
My first conclusion is that the system works. This is quite a relief!
My second conclusion is that the system works slightly better than I had been hoping for.
Being able to heat the house with these low radiator temperatures means that over winter the average COP could be higher than my prior estimate of 3. This means I will use less energy, emit less CO2, and spend less than I had estimated.
My third conclusion is that average heating power was about 1 kW during both days. But the system has plenty of margin to deliver more power either by changing the duty cycle – the pump could stay on for longer – or by increasing the flow temperature.
As soon as the weather settles down to being reliably cold I will begin to carry out experiments to optimise the weather compensation.
My fourth conclusion will be the basis of another article – but I can see already that as far as heating is concerned – I am going to have a very cheap winter.
The combination of 12 solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall battery has been sufficient for us to be practically off-grid for the last 3 months. And that will probably continue for another 3 months.
..it feels astonishing to be sustaining a good quality of life powered entirely by the Sun.
As we approach the summer solstice, I feel like I have reached apogee in a solar-powered rocket, and I am briefly floating weightless.
A week of miserable weather has brought me firmly back down to Earth.
After 87 days drawing no electricity from the grid, as the chart below shows, we have had to re-connect.
Click for a larger version. The graph shows daily electricity drawn from the grid (kWh)since November last year. After the battery installation, this fell to almost zero. Also shown is daily electricity used from the battery and solar panels (kWh). This has risen recently because electricity is now being used for air conditioning, cooking and domestic hot water.
We have now switched the mode of operating the battery so that it charges itself at night using off-peak electricity.
Solar Statistics: Summer Solstice Review
The summer solstice is probably a good point to review the performance of the solar panels installed last November 2020.
The £4200 system consists of 12 Q-Cells Duo BLK-G8 panels tilted at 40°. Six panels facing 25° East of South and six facing 65° West of South. A fuller description can be found here.
Click for a larger version. The graph shows daily solar generation (kWh)versus day of the year along with a 5-day running average. Also shown are two estimates for expected generation (kWh)alongside typical daily consumption.
The last 5 days have seen very poor generation. Last Friday 18th June, generation was just 2.3 kWh – more typical of mid-winter than mid-summer! And a battery with 13.5 kWh capacity is not big enough to see us through this dip.
Click for a larger version. The graph shows cumulative solar generation (kWh)versus day of the year along with a cumulative exports (kWh). Also shown are lines showing the estimated annual and semi-annualgeneration as specified by the installer.
Total generation so far this year is 1780 kWh – very close to 50% of the installer’s annual estimate.
The system has exported 590 kWh, my benevolent contribution to the grid, and I have used around 1200 kWh saving me around £250 compared to the situation without solar panels and batteries. If the panel’s performance is similar in the second half of the year, this would give a modest 3.5% return on my investment.
Carbon dioxide emissions
Some fraction of this generation will have displaced gas generation which would have given rise to 0.45 kgCO2 per kWh, and some fraction will have displaced a typical generating mix which would have given rise to roughly 0.2 kgCO2 per kWh.
So depending on the assumptions made, my electricity generation has probably avoided emissions of between 350 kg and 800 kg of carbon dioxide so far this year, and will probably have avoided between 0.7 and 1.6 tonnes of CO2 by the end of the year.
The bigger plan
The installation last week of the Air Source Heat Pump, a Vaillant Arotherm plus 5 kW model, together with a domestic hot water cylinder, marks the end of my investments in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the house.
The ‘magic’ of the heat pump is that it uses 1 kWh of electrical energy to extract typically 2 kWh of thermal energy from the air, yielding around 3 kWh of heating.
This is central to reducing my carbon dioxide emissions. It has allowed me to replace the polluting gas boiler.
To compare carbon dioxide emissions with what what would have happened if I had made no changes, I have made a month-by-month estimate of household carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years.
These calculations are still preliminary, but the figure below shows their general form. It charts the anticipated carbon dioxide emissions if I had done nothing, alongside the anticipated carbon dioxide emissions in my plan.
Click for a larger graph. This chart shows month-by-month calculations of anticipated household carbon dioxide emissions based my current plan, or the do nothing alternative.
The green line shows an initial rise due to the 10.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted during the manufacture of:
External Wall Insulation Boards (1.6 tonnes)
External Wall Mortar (1.0 tonnes)
Argon Triple Glazing (1.9 tonnes)
Solar Panels (1.6 tonnes)
Battery (1.4 tonnes)
Heat Pump (1.5 tonnes)
Air Conditioning (1.5 tonnes)
Thegreen line then shows a much lower slope. The calculations indicate a break-even in terms of carbon dioxide by the end of 2023, and the non-emission of around 60 tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2040 when compared with the ‘do nothing‘ alternative.
So…
It’s disappointing to be back ‘on grid’ for a few days, but overall the solar panels are performing pretty much as anticipated, already avoiding the emissions of hundreds of kilograms of carbon dioxide.
And they are just one part of the plan. The installation of the Air Source Heat Pump is the last part of the plan, and I will now monitor the house to see if my expectations are fulfilled.
Installation of an air source heat pump (ASHP) in my own house is sadly on hold while the installers await delivery of a part. So I thought I would take this opportunity to update you with one or two things I have learned about how real-world heat pumps operate.
What is a heat pump?
I am preparing an article about how heat pumps work internally, but considering only their operational behaviour, they work like the device illustrated below.
Click for a larger version.
Powered by electricity, they extract heat from the air.
Cold water enters the the heat pump.
Warm water flows out.
The engineered ‘miracle’ of a heat pump is that 1 kWh of electrical energy can extract between 2 kWh and 4 kWh of heat energy from the air.
It might seem that nothing could be simpler or more wonderful? But the engineering reality behind the ‘miracle’ requires that the heat pump be operated carefully.
The problem
The key problem is that heat pumps require a high flow of water through them in order to enable efficient operation of the heat exchangers which extract heat from the air. Typical flows are in the range 20 to 40 litres per minute of water.
For my 5 kW heat pump, this can warm such a flow of water by only 2 or 3 °C. So how can such a device heat water to 55 °C?
Domestic Hot Water
When the heat pump is configured to heat domestic hot water – for sinks and bathrooms – then the circuit looks like the figure below.
Click for a larger version. Schematic diagram of how a heat pump heats domestic hot water. See text for further details.
In DHW-mode, the water in the heat pump circuit is passed through a steel tube wound inside an insulated water storage cylinder. This acts as a heat-exchanger between the water in the heat pump circuit, and the water in the cylinder.
But remember, the ‘hot’ water in the heat pump circuit is just a degree or two warmer than the returning ‘cold water. So how can this ever heat the domestic water to 55 °C.
The trick is having a smart heat-pump controller and low losses in the connecting pipework.
The heat pump controller first sets the heat pump operating parameters to warm the water returning from the DHW by a few degrees.
As the DHW tank warms, the returning water also warms, and the controller slowly adjusts the operation of the heat pump to increase the temperature of the water it supplies to the DHW tank. Eventually the controller detects when the water in the DHW tank has reached its set temperature.
So for example, if the outside temperature is 10 °C, and the water returning from the DHW tank is initially at 20 °C, then:
Initially the controller configures the heat pump to heat the flowing water to (say) 22 °C. Pumping heat from air at 10 °C to water at 22 °C can be done much more efficiently than pumping heat from 10 °C to 55 °C.
At first the temperature of the water returning from the DHW tank will be only slightly above 20 °C. But as heat is transferred to the DHW tank the temperature of the water returning from the DHW tank increases.
In response to this increase in the temperature of the returning water, the controller re-configures the heat pump to an incrementally higher temperature.
By adopting this clever strategy:
The first part of the heating can be done with higher efficiency – perhaps resulting in 4 units of heating for each unit of electrical work.
The later part of the heating is less efficient and might only results in 3 units of heating for each unit of electrical work.
So overall – depending on the maximum temperature required – the so-called coefficient of performance (COP) is usually somewhere between 3 and 4.
Space Heating
When the heat pump is configured for room heating – so called ‘space heating’ in the lingo – then the circuit looks like the figure below.
Click for a larger version. Schematic diagram of how a heat pump heats radiators. See text for further details.
I was surprised to find that in this mode of operation the water from the heat pump is not passed directly through the system of radiators.
Instead, most of the water passes through a short section of tubing called a ‘low loss header’ and goes straight back to the heat pump. This allows the heat pump to operate at high flow rates.
The water used in the radiators is drawn from the top of the ‘low loss header’ and returns – cooler – to the top of the ‘low loss header’.
However there is almost no pressure difference between the top and bottom of the ‘low loss header’ – and so very little water would naturally flow through the radiators. So a hydraulic pump is used to push water through the radiators.
The cooled water from the radiators now mixes with the main flow at the bottom of the ‘low loss header’ and returns to the heat pump.
Click for a larger version. Schematic illustration of a ‘low loss header’ See text for further details.
So for example, if the heat pump is supplying 20 litres per minute of water at 55 °C to the ‘low loss header’:
The hydraulic pump draws perhaps 4 litres per minute of water at 55 °C leaving 16 litres per minute to flow straight through the header.
The return water from the radiators is cooled to (say) 45 °C.
From this one can calculate that the radiators have provided heating of 2.8 kW.
So at the bottom of the ‘low loss header’ there is a mixture of:
16 litres per minute of water at 55 °C
4 litres per minute of water at 45°C
When mixed together this makes 20 litres per minute of water at approximately 53 °C which is returned to the heat pump.
At first I was puzzled by this arrangement, but then I realised it was clever trick.
It allows the heat pump to operate at high flow rates and yet heat water only over small temperature differences.
And it allows the radiators to operate with lower flows and bigger temperature drops.
For those with experience of electronics, it is analogous to the ‘impedance matching’ effect of a transformer.
It’s complicated…
Things are more complicated than these diagrams would suggest.
Firstly, the heat pump can only operate in one mode at a time.
So the heat pump controller changes modes by operating a valve to direct the water from the heat pump either to the DHW storage tank or the radiators.
Secondly, there are numerous features incorporated for reasons of safety or maintainability.
Some of these guard against the effects of thermal expansion of the water, some guard against the (low risk) of Legionella infection, and some are filters or energy monitoring components.
But I hope the explanations above come close to getting to the gist of heat pump operation.
I have lots more to say about heat pumps: so stay tuned!
Click for a larger version. Similarities and differences in how an air sourceheat pump (ASHP) or an air conditioning (AC) system warms a home. All the components inside the dotted green line are contained in the external units shown. A key design difference is whether or not the working fluid is completely contained in the external unit. See text for more details.
Regular readers will probably be aware that – having reduced the heating demand in my house – my plan is to switch away from gas heating and install an electrically-powered air source heat pump to heat the house and provide domestic hot water.
But next week I am also installing air conditioning, something which is traditionally not thought of as very ‘green’. What’s going on?
Why Air Conditioning?
I have two reasons.
My first reason is that, as you may have heard, the whole world is warming up! Last year it reached 38 °C in Teddington and was unbearably hot for a week. I never want to experience that again.
During the summer the air conditioning will provide cooling. But assuming the heating comes with good weather, the air conditioning will be totally solar powered, and so it will not give rise to any CO2 emissions to make matters worse!
My second reason is that in the right circumstances, air conditioning is a very efficient way to heat a house. That’s what this article is about.
Heat Pumps
Air Conditioners (AC) and Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP) are both types of heat pumps.
In scientific parlance, a heat pump is any machine that moves heat from colder temperatures to higher temperatures at the expense of mechanical work.
Note: to distinguish between the general scientific idea of a heat pump, and the practical implementation in an air source heat pump, I will use abbreviation ASHP when talking about the practical device.
The general idea of a heat pump is illustrated in the conceptual schematic below.
As shown, the pump uses 1 unit of mechanical energy to extract two units of heat energy from air at (say) 5 °C and expel all 3 units of energy (1 mechanical and 2 thermal) as heat into hot water at (say) 55 °C.
Click for a larger version. Traditional representation of the operation of heat pump.
Heat pumps can seem miraculous, but like all good miracles, they are really just applied science and engineering.
A heat pump is characterised using two parameters: COP and ΔT.
A heat pump which delivers 3 units of heat for 1 unit of work is said to have a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3.
The temperature difference between the hot and cold ends of the heat pump is usually called ‘Delta T’ or ΔT.
Obviously engineers would like to build heat pumps with high COPs, and big ΔTs and they have used all kinds of ingenious techniques to achieve this.
But it turns out that heat pumps only operate with high COPs when the ΔT is small and when the heating power is low. There are two reasons.
Firstly, the laws of thermodynamic set some absolute limits on the COP achievable for a given ΔT.
Most practical heat pumps don’t come close to this thermodynamic limit for a variety of mundane reasons.
The maximum COP for moving heat from 5 °C to 55 °C is 6.6.
The maximum COP for moving heat from 5 °C to 20 °C is 19.5.
Secondly, in order to heat a room to (say) 20 °C, the hot end of the heat pump needs to be hotter than 20 °C.
Typically the hot end of the heat pump must be 5 °C to 10 °C warmer than the room in order that heat will flow out of the heat pump.
Additionally the cold end of the heat pump must be 5 °C to 10 °C colder than the external air in order that heat will flow into the heat pump.
The interfaces between the ends of the pump and the environment are called heat exchangers and designing ‘good’ heat exchangers is tricky.
A ‘good’ heat exchanger is one that allows high heat flows for small temperature differences.
So now we have seen how heat pumps are characterised, let’s see how heat pumps are used domestically.
Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) versus Air Conditioner (AC)
The schematic diagrams below show how a house is heated by an ASHP and an AC system. Both systems operate using a working fluid such as butane, which is ingeniously compressed and expanded. The details of this process are not the topic of this article so here I am glossing over the fascinating details of the device’s operation. Sorry.
Click for a larger version. How an air sourceheat pump (ASHP) warms a home. All the components inside the dotted green line are contained in the external unit shown. A key design feature is that the working fluid is completely contained in the external unit and heat is transferred to the central heating water by a heat exchanger.
Click for a larger version. How an air conditioner (AC) warms a home. All the components inside the dotted green lines are contained in either the external unit or the fan coil unit shown. A key feature is that the working fluid itself flows into the fan coil unit and heats the air directly.
We can compare the operation of the two systems in the table below.
Air Conditioner
Air Source Heat Pump
Air at (say) 5 °C is blown over a heat exchanger and evaporates the working fluid.
The same.
The working fluid is then compressed – that’s the bit where the work is done – and liquefies, releasing the captured heat.
The same.
The hot working fluid – now at ~30 °C then flows through a pipe to an indoor heat exchanger (fan coil unit) where air is blown over the pipe and heated to 20 °C.
The hot working fluid – now at ~60 °C then flows through a heat exchanger and transfers the heat to water in my central heating system at ~55 °C
No corresponding step
The 55 °C water then flows through a radiator in my room, heating the room by radiation and by convective heat transfer to air at ~20 °C.
Looking closely at the figures and table above, one can see that the operation of the ASHP and the AC system are broadly similar.
However the ASHP has to operate with a bigger ΔT (~55 °C versus ~25 °C) than the AC system, and also has to transfer heat through an extra heat exchanger.
Both these factors degrade the achievable COP and so for my application, the specified COP for an ASHP is just over 3, but for the AC system, it is just over 5.
In my well-insulated house, when the external temperature is 5 °C, I require typically 36 kWh per day of heating, equivalent to 1.7 kW continuous heating. I can achieve this in several ways:
Using gas I must burn ~40 kWh of gas at 90% efficiency costing 40 x 3p (£1.20) and emitting 40 x 200 g = 8 kgCO2
Using an ASHP with a COP of 3, I must use ~36 kWh/3 = 12 kWh of electricity costing 12 x 25p (£3.00) and emitting 12 x 200 g = 2.4 kgCO2
Using an AC system with a COP of 5, I must use ~36 kWh/5 = 7.2 kWh of electricity costing 7.2 x 25p (£1.80) and emitting 7.2 x 200 g = 1.4 kgCO2
Using a domestic battery and buying the electricity at night for 8p/kWh, I can reduce the cost of using an ASHP or AC system by a factor of 3 to £1.00/day or £0.60/day respectively.
[Note: In these calculations I have assumed that the carbon dioxide emissions per kWh are same for both gas and UK electricity (200 gCO2/kWh) which is roughly correct for 2021]
So using an AC system I should be able to achieve domestic heating with lower carbon dioxide emissions than an ASHP.
My plan
In my case I need to heat water for my home to 55 °C for use in showers and basins. So I need an ASHP for that. And since I already have radiators in every room, hooking up the ASHP to the radiator circuits is smart double use.
The AC system I am having installed will have 1 external unit and 2 internal ‘fan coil units’. One unit will be in my bedroom (a sheer indulgence) and the other will be high up on the stairs, allowing air to be either blown down to the ground floor where I hope it will circulate, or blown towards the bedrooms.
My hope is that, when used together, the AC system (COP~5) will reduce the heating output required from the radiators so that I can reduce the flow temperature of the water from 55 °C to perhaps 40 °C. This reduces their heat output, but increase the COP of the ASHP from 3 to perhaps 4.
The main difficulty that I foresee is the extent to which the AC heating will actually permeate through the house and so reduce the amount of heating required by the ASHP.
So I am not sure how much heating will be required by the ASHP acting through the radiators, and whether the radiators will work at low flow temperatures. It is possible I might need to replace a few radiators with ones which work better at low temperatures.
It is not at all obvious that this plan will actually work at all – but I think it is worth a try.
Kit
The air conditioning I am having installed is a Daikin 2MXM40 multi-split outdoor unit with two FTXM25 indoor air units. (Brochure)
The model of heat pump I will have installed is a Vaillant Arotherm plus 5 kW. It can supply up 5 kW of heating at 55 °C with a COP of 3 – i.e. it will use just 1.6 kW of electrical power to do that – and heat water to 55 °C. Water storage will be a 200 litre Unistor cylinder. A brochure with technical details can be found here, and a dramatic video showing the kit is linked at the end of this article.
When I have come to terms with how much money I am spending on this, I will share that information. But at the moment it hurts to think about it!
Protons for Breakfast 