SunHorizon: Sun coupled Innovative Heat Pumps

24 Oct 2018

Solar energy and heat pumps collaborate towards the decarbonization of EU Heating and Cooling systems

In October 2018, H2020 SunHorizon project has officially kicked-off, boosting an international consortium made up of 21 partners from 11 EU countries with a common goal: demonstrate how heat pumps and solar energy can operate in a mutual benefit way to decarbonize EU H&C scenario.

We are glad to announce that RINA is the coordinator of this new project aiming to demonstrate innovative and reliable Heat Pump solutions (thermal compression, adsorption, reversible) that acting properly coupled and managed with advanced solar panels (PV, Hybrid, thermal) can provide heating and cooling to residential and tertiary buildings with lower emissions, energy bills and fossil fuel dependency.

SunHorizon is a demonstration to market project where the combination of 5 H&C technologies (Ratiotherm, BDR, BoostHeat, DualSun, TVP solar) in 5 technology packages will be demonstrated in 8 demosites all around Europe (Germany, Spain, Latvia, Belgium). A Cloud based functional monitoring platform will be implemented as well in order to:

• be the “performance data mine” for the development of Data Driven/KPI oriented optimized algorithms and tools for predictive maintenance;
• optimize the management towards maximisation of solar exploitation;
• give to the manufacturer inputs for enhancing the design of their components.

This monitoring platform will also drive smart monitoring end user interfaces that will be applied at building level to collect thermal comfort data towards a new thermal comfort driven heating control system.

Demo activities will be held in different EU contexts to evaluate different climatic and energy market solutions. SunHorizon innovative technologies will be deployed in small and large scale residential (single house and apartment blocks) and tertiary buildings (public buildings, sport centers).

The project, that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement N. 818329, is expected to:

• provide a straightforward retrofit to upgrade the performance and cost-efficiency of 6 components of renewable H&C systems;
• reduce H&C dependence on fossil fuels through the demonstration of optimised, cost-effective solutions;
• strengthen the competitiveness and growth of the involved industrial partners, enabling to mobilize significant investments by 2030 and capture a sizeable H&C market share with a potential revenue of 2,000 M€ in the residential and tertiary building sector.

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