What is the problem/issue being addressed ?
RESHeat is an energy trigeneration system, i.e. it uses renewable energy to produce electricity, heat and cold for the needs of residential and public buildings.
The basic features of the proposed solution are: the use of solar energy as the main source of renewable energy; heat and electricity generation using PVT (PhotoVoltaic Thermal) modules of the new design; the use of PVT modules and PTC (Parabolic Trough Collector) equipped with sun-tracking system, increasing the solar energy yield; seasonal underground thermal energy storage; utilizing low-temperature heat from PVT modules for ground thermal regeneration; hutilizing heat pump for space heating and cooling.
Why is it important for society ?
More than half of the annual energy consumption in households is related to space heating and air conditioning. In the European Union, space and domestic hot water heating accounts for 79% of all energy consumed by consumers. Moreover, about 75% of the energy used for these purposes is produced from fossil fuels. Switching to renewable heating and cooling technologies such as biomass boilers and solar heating systems may help reducing fossil fuels utilization. The RESHeat project aims to create an innovative, zero-emission and autonomous energy system based only on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) solutions. The system’s innovations include integrated, cooled solar panels and solar collectors equipped with sun-tracking systems, as well as advanced underground energy storage systems. The aim of the project is to achieve a high efficiency ratio of the heat pump in the long term, which will guarantee efficient underground energy storage, while reducing the amount of energy consumed by the heat pump compressor. In addition, the solution will allow the storage of heat from various sources, including low-temperature waste heat sources.
What are the overall objectives ?
a) Development and application of heating and domestic hot water (DHW) preparation system to cover at least 70% of the total yearly energy demand of a building from RES,
b) Demonstration of the real performance (including economic performance) of innovative renewable and energy-efficient solutions for heating, cooling and DHW preparation in multi-apartment residential buildings and to provide information on the overall system performance to the end-user,
c) Demonstration of system scalability for different types of multi-apartment residential buildings,
d) System technology movement from TRL 7 to TRL 8,
e) Elaboration of the competitiveness in the building value chain and its position in growth markets,
f) Estimation of technical and economic parameters of the system (energy production, annual efficiency, costs, and energy benefit calculations, economic analysis including the worst-case scenario, the return of investment).
