Experimental investigation of thermal performance of a solar assisted heat pump system with an energy storage

An experimental solar assisted heat pump space heating system with a daily energy storage tank is designed and constructed, and its thermal performance is investigated. The heating system basically consists of flat plate solar collectors, a heat pump, a cylindrical storage tank, measuring units, and a heating room located in Gaziantep, Turkey (37.1degreesN). All measurements are automatically collected as a function of time by means of a measurement chain feeding to a data logger in combination with a PC. Hourly and daily variations of solar radiation, collector performance, coefficient of performance of the heat pump (COPHP), and that of the overall system (COPS) are calculated to evaluate the system performance. The effects of climatic conditions and certain operating parameters on the system performance parameters are investigated. COPHP is about 2.5 for a lower storage temperature at the end of a cloudy day and it is about 3.5 for a higher storage temperature at the end of a sunny day, and it fluctuates between these values in other times. Also, COPS turns out to be about 15-20% lower than COPHP. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.