Design and technical improvement of heat-pump systems for existing multifamily buildings

Pierre Hollmuller Head of Systèmes Energétiques Group

Abstract
Switching from fossil boilers to heat pumps (HP) can drastically reduce CO2-emissions of the Swiss building stock. Such can be achieved with or without combined envelope retrofit, which will stretch over several decades. While the potential market is huge, many challenges and obstacles need to be solved, in particular for existing multi-family buildings and related large capacity air-source HPs (> 50 kW). Analysis of case studies in actual condition of use, complemented by numerical simulation, allow to highlight these challenges and indicate potential optimization in terms of sizing, system integration, control strategies, as well as industrial developments.

Authors: Hollmuller, Pierre; Montero Dominguez, Omar; Brischoux, Pauline.