Energy consumption modeling of air source electric heat pump water heaters

Electric heat pump air source water heaters may provide an opportunity for significant improvements in residential water heater energy efficiency in countries with temperate climates. As the performance of these appliances can vary widely, it is important for consumers to be able to accurately assess product performance in their application to maximise energy savings and ensure uptake of this technology. For a given ambient temperature and humidity, the performance of an air source heat pump water heater is strongly correlated to the water temperature in or surrounding the condenser. It is therefore important that energy consumption models for these products duplicate the real-world water temperatures applied to the heat pump condenser. This paper examines a recently published joint Australian and New Zealand Standard, AS/NZS 4234: 2008; Heated water systems - Calculation of energy consumption. Using this standard a series TRNSYS models were run for several split type air source electric heat pump water heaters. An equivalent set of models was then run utilizing an alternative water use pattern. Unfavorable errors of up to 12% were shown to occur in modeling of heat pump water heater performance using the current standard compared to the alternative regime. The difference in performance of a model using varying water use regimes can be greater than the performance difference between models of product. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.