Digitalization and Internet of Things (IoT) for heat pumps
As digitalization progresses, heat pumps are becoming part of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this project, the opportunities and challenges of IoT-capable heat pumps for the use in households, commercial enterprises and industrial applications will be investigated and made available to the relevant target groups in the form of guidelines, data and information relevant to standards.
Digitalisation is seen as an important factor in the transformation of the energy system. Intelligent, digital solutions are increasingly in demand in order to efficiently use various flexibility options such as power-based heat generation, the use of storage facilities or e-mobility as well as to safely control the networks. Heat pumps will play an important role in the energy system of the future and will increasingly become networked devices that participate in the Internet of Things as digitalization progresses. They will be designed to intelligently meet demand, enabling real-time energy efficiency, flexible use of electricity, optimized load profiles and an optimized compromise in terms of comfort and operating costs. In contrast to the building sector, industrial companies have long been using digital technologies to optimize process controls and production figures. In addition to classic application fields of logistics, industrial IoT platforms are increasingly being used for online monitoring of production facilities and cross-location energy management.
The IEA HPT Annex 56 project aims to survey the opportunities and challenges of IoT-enabled heat pumps for household, commercial and industrial applications and to make them available to the relevant target groups, in particular OEMs, heat pump manufacturers, associations and regulatory authorities.
The technical framework conditions will be surveyed in order to make sensible use of heat pumps as IoT components. It will also be worked out how heat pumps can be represented by suitable data and information models and which protocols are suitable for connection to the IoT. Based on different digital twins of heat pumps, methods for data analysis are examined for their suitability. Applications and possible business models based on IoT-capable heat pumps will be analyzed and evaluated. In addition, the risks of networking in terms of information and data security and privacy will be considered.
The project will result in a structured overview of IoT-capable heat pumps to be documented in the form of reports, guidelines, data and information relevant to standardization, which will be disseminated widely to the relevant target groups, in particular OEMs, heat pump manufacturers, associations and regulatory authorities, in the participating countries.
Project Partner
AIT Austrian Institute of Technologie (Projektleitung), TU Wien, University of Applied Sciences Burgenland GmbH
Funding tools
FFG - Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft, IEA Call for Proposals 2019 - Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK)
