SPF Institut für SolartechnikWissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin SPF
+41 58 257 41 52kanchan.bohara@ost.ch
Clean water, a reliable power supply and cooling systems for medicines and vaccines are not a given in many rural hospitals in Africa. To ensure better healthcare also in remote regions, the EU is supporting SophiA project, which relies on modular containers to produce drinking water, heat, cold and electricity using solar energy. SPF Institute for Solar Technology is part of the international team responsible for the solar technology, the Life Cycle Assessment of the SophiA systems as well as the energy management and control of the subsystems.
The seasonal storage of heat in 100 % solar thermal heated single and multifamily buildings has been implemented in a number of projects in Switzerland. The first multifamily building with seasonal thermal energy storage that uses a combination of PV and heat pump instead of a solar thermal system is currently being built in Benzenschwil (AG/CH). In this project, concepts with solar thermal, solar electrical and combined solutions for 100% solar heating are compared, wherefore the entire lifecycle (LCA) of the different system is considered.
In the project HpCosy the basics for a decentralized brine-water heat pump system for flats in
multi-family houses will be developed and investigated. This "Comfort System" includes the functions heating, cooling and domestic hot water preparation, whereby the latter can optionally be controlled with the consideration of availability of own photovoltaic electricity as an individual system or in a swarm (cooperation for self-consumption).
The project is being carried out on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and in collaboration with other partners from industry and research.
Fully solar heated single and multifamily houses are already technically feasible. The seasonal storage in these systems is associated with corresponding investment cost and demand for storage volume. This project analyses whether cost and used storage volume can be reduced with the combination of solar thermal with a PV driven heat pump system. Therefore, an existing system will be monitored and new innovative concepts are simulated and optimized. The project is carried out in collaboration with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (HSLU) and Jenni Energietechnik AG.