The project "Coole Wärme”, which is funded by the German Environment Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU) kicked-off, powering the heat transition in Oldenburg!

Our project “Coole Wärme - Real-life experiment for highly transferable PVT-based heat pump systems in residential buildings” is funded by the German Environment Foundation (in German: Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt – DBU, www.dbu.de ). During the next two years, we will work together with our partners, the Energy management group at the DLR-Institute for networked Energy Systems (DLR-VE) and the local energy cooperative in Oldenburg, OLEGENO eG. 

Decarbonizing the heat sector, which, in Germany and many other European countries, represents a significant share of national CO₂ emissions, is of great importance. In recent years, latest after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, electrifying the heat demands and substituting fossil fuelled boilers by highly efficient electrical heat pumps has gained momentum as strategy for that purpose. Heat pumps are very efficient and they can be powered renewably by locally installed PV systems. However, what if we could operate them even more efficiently and make a double use of the available roof-space in buildings by generating heat and electricity at the same time? Using PV-T modules this is possible. The number of PV-T collectors in the market is growing rapidly. However, planers and installers do not always have up-to-date information on these systems. 

PVT systems increase the efficiency of the heat pumps but also the system costs (you may check results from a previous project on this topic here: https://wp-monitoring.ise.fraunhofer.de/integrate/german/index/index.html ). Additionally, many of the existing installed projects are highly innovative “technical jewels” of heat systems which could not be realized without great budget and space available. This may scare potential planers and users to deploy PVT systems combined with heat pumps in other situations. Our project investigates the possibilities of using these systems in contexts of low budget and space available (e.g. urban context with limited roof areas). Together with our partners, we will develop guidelines for meaningful sizing, financing and operation of such systems in urban contexts. To develop systems which are technically feasible and ready to be installed, we will discuss our results and system layouts with local planers and installers in several workshops.

We will communicate results and events in a website (currently under construction). 

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