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Research and Innovation | News | 17/01/2017

H2020 - Heat4Cool Grant

H2020 - Heat4Cool Grant

Hypertech Energy Labs have been recently awarded with a new contract from the European Commission with the aim to develop an innovative, efficient and cost-effective solution to optimize the integration of a set of rehabilitation systems in order to meet the net-zero energy standards in buildings. Heat4Cool develops, integrates and demonstrates an easy to install and highly energy efficient solution for building retrofitting.

Smart building retrofitting complemented by solar assisted heat pumps integrated within a self-correcting intelligent building energy management system.

Twelve partners from 9 European countries - Greece (Hypertech Energy Labs), Spain (Tecnalia, Solintel, Symelec), Italy (Politecnico di Milano), Germany (Sortech), Hungary (ThermoWatt), United Kingdom (Sunamp, AES), Bulgaria (Balkanika Energy), Poland (IZNAB) and Belgium (European Heat Pump Association) - will work together for 48 months in the €7.5M Heat4Cool project.

Residential buildings use a significant amount of energy and Heat4Cool project argues that the best energy efficiency savings can only be achieved through integrated physical solutions always in combination with the improvement of the building operation, which is highly related with user behavior and control strategy. The proposed solution is founded on three developments:

  • The first one is based on new technologies for retrofitting the buildings´ heating and cooling equipment, which will focus on reducing the energy consumption by means of a combination or replacement of existing natural gas boilers along with RES installation forming an energy efficient and easy to install solution. This solution will be the result of an optimized evaluation considering the following technologies: Adsorption Heat Pump and DC Heat Pump coupled with a scalable storage solution, renewable energy, sewage heat recovery system, and Self-Correcting Intelligent Building Energy Management System (SCI-BEMS).
  • The second development is the extension of the retrofitting solution at district scale by the integration and innovative use of central ICT for smart grid services to provide an open and competitive energy market through appropriate applications and services enabling distributed renewable energy integration and application of demand response control and optimization strategies in scales beyond individual buildings.
  • The third pillar is the development of a holistic market-oriented retrofitting framework towards net-zero energy standards characterized by high replicability, better management and effective knowledge sharing.The technical part of the project will consist of a decision support tool for the optimal selection of heating and cooling technologies, the development and implementation of a AdHP assisted by integrated renewable sources, the configuration of an energy efficient system that integrates Solar PV, DC powered Heat Pump and PCM scalable heat storage , the development of an advanced system to harvest waste heat from sewage at district level, the simulation of different combination of technologies and solutions, the performance modelling (both at building and district levels) and the configuration of a smart building energy management system (SCI-BEMS) taking user behaviour as an important input.

The non-technical part of the Heat4Cool project will involve analysis of retrofitting solutions and existing technologies from current running projects, exploitation of the developed solutions and their integration into the Heat4Cool project, the increase of replicability of the envisaged solution along with the mitigation of relevant barriers and the development of an effective marketing strategy as part of the Heat4Cool business model.

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