Performance of a solar assisted heat pump system

In this study, a series solar heat pump system which uses solar energy storage as a heat source was simulated. The simulation was performed for a house in Istanbul, Turkey for space heating. The fraction of the space heating load that was supplied by the solar assisted system was determined as a function of collector area and thermal storage volume. The heat pump, solar panels, storage tank and thermal response of the house were dynamically analyzed, and a computer model was obtained for each one. The whole system was simulated by varying panel area and tank size. Also, a detailed parametric study was performed for only the heat pump by changing the inlet water temperatures of the heat exchangers. The computer program includes design and off-design parts. First, four major components in the vapor compression cycle were sized. Once the system has been defined, the program is able to compute the performance of the system at all possible combinations of inlet flow stream conditions.