Techno-economic analysis of an exhaust air heat pump system assisted by unglazed transpired solar collectors in a Swedish residential cluster

•Energy system analysis for a building cluster in Sweden consisting of solar assisted Exhaust Air Heat Pump (EAHP) in series arrangement.•The techno-economic and sensitivity analysis is carried for the proposed system. A control strategy for UTSC airflow control is developed.•The UTSC has a small and positive impact on the overall system performance and a negative impact on the economic performance.•The developed control strategy is effective to increase the overall system seasonal performance factor. Solar heating technologies hold a significant potential to supplement or replace the fossil fuel-driven heating systems in residential and industrial applications. This paper presents a techno-economic study aiming to assess the use of Unglazed Transpired Solar Collectors (UTSC) coupled with an energy system assisted by Exhaust Air Heat Pump (EAHP) in cold climates applied to a residential building cluster. The performance of the system and its components is assessed for different sizes of solar collector field. In addition, a rule-based algorithm is developed to manage the airflow into the UTSC, and a comparative analysis is carried out with conventional flow control. The existing EAHP assisted energy system of a multifamily building cluster in Sweden is modelled by using a simulation software TRNSYS, and the effects of the UTSCs integration on the performances of the energy system are evaluated. Results show that the integration of UTSCs has a small but positive impact on the overall system performance. Moreover, the developed control based on the variation of the collector airflow rate for UTSC is an effective control strategy to increase the seasonal performance factor of the overall system and to maximize the savings.