Energy and economic analysis of different heat pump systems for space heating

Filippo Busato, Renato M. Lazzarin and Marco Noro

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies, 2012, vol. 7, issue 2, 104-112

Abstract: The consumption of natural gas as a primary energy source in Italy has increased during recent years, mainly due to more widespread use of modern natural gas-fired combined cycle power plants. It is generally accepted that such an increased use of natural gas is beneficial, particularly in summer, due to the ‘take-or-pay’ contracts that often regulate energy supply. Conversely, the use of electrical energy should be decreased, in order to limit the ‘peak demand’ problem that has become prevalent in Italy. Therefore, besides electrically driven heat pumps (EHPs) that achieve good efficiencies, it is interesting to also consider the option of combustion engine-driven GEHPs for space heating purposes. In the latter type of HPs, losses attributed to the production and transport of electricity are eliminated and, in addition, there is the possibility to re-use the heat from the combustion engine. This article presents an assessment of the annual economic and energy profiles of electric and internal combustion engine HPs for space heating purposes. Due to the dependency of the performance of such technology on the source and sink (heating circuit) temperature levels, a comparison is performed of air-to-water HP systems (the most widely used) in two cases of maximum flow temperatures. The calculations show that natural gas-driven HPs can achieve approximately the same efficiency as electrically driven HPs that are powered with electricity from modern natural gas-fired combined cycle power plants. Within this study, the efficiencies of such systems are also compared with those that utilize conventional boiler technologies. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ijlct/cts016 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ijlctc:v:7:y:2012:i:2:p:104-112

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies is currently edited by Saffa B. Riffat

More articles in International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().