The Future of Home Comfort: Combining Solar, Heat Pumps, and Thermal Mass

There is no better way for a residence to use solar energy than to use it via powering hot water heat pumps to:

1. Heat their hot water by powering an air-to-water heat pump

§ A 300L cylinder stores about 15kWhr of energy

§ This can be done for any home; old or new

§ These heat pumps can produce up to five times the kW of heat for each kW of Solar electricity

2. Heat or cool their home with an air-to-water heat pump

§ a 200M2 home stores about 1kWhr of heat per M2, i.e. approximately 200kWhr of heat energy

§ Cooling can be accomplished via the Under Floor Heating system

§ Or it can be cooled by a water fed Fan Coil that cools the air

3. Use the Solar energy at its peak and store it for later use

§ This allows the use of electric batteries to be more focused

For the future of all houses, new and old, these uses of Solar energy make the most sense of all.

Daily temperature fluctuations for different construction methods.

	2. Thermal mass for various materials
Material	Thermal mass (volumetric heat capacity, KJ/m³.k)
Source: Baggs and Mortensen 2006
Water	4186
Concrete	2060
Sandstone	1800
Compressed earth blocks	1740
Rammed earth	1673
Fibre cement sheet (compressed)	1530
Brick	1360
Earth wall (adobe)	1300
Autoclaved aerated concrete	550