Full electric buildings with Heat Pumps. indoor air quality, health, energy: The comfort becomes smart [25]

According to the European Commission, around 80 % of the final energy consumption in residential buildings is used for space and water heating. Heat Pumps are a mature technology able to fully exploit renewable sources, ambient energy and waste heat. Furthermore, in buildings they can also provide user with sustainable cooling when needed. That is why heat pumps are consistent with at least four EU strategic pillars, such as Decarbonisation, Efficiency increase, massive use of Renewables, the RePowerEU plan.

The Heat Pump (HP) technology allows users to operate their home while storing and transferring the energy captured from the sun, through PV systems, in the most effective form, either thermal or electric.

The thermal storage can use three components. First, the space volume becomes the source to individual HP ventilation units, able to purify the air while recovering the exhaust energy. The second component refers to heating and cooling the space. Third, the domestic hot water volume becomes an additional key opportunity to store energy according to the user’s needs.

The electric storage, with its modular battery and inverter packages (energy storage systems), is pivotal within the energy flow, as it converts for free to thermal energy and is able to shift daily production to night use.

Latest technologies introduce then a central Energy Assistant to optimise the whole energy flow within the house, according to both the PV production and the system design, the user’s habits and a number of IoT variables and energy cost dynamics. This means two benefits at once: targeting Energy independency as the individual result, while opening the opportunity to access the Energy Community business model on a larger scale.