Development of a Control Strategy for a PVT-based CO2 Heat Pump

In recent years, the possibility of combining photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal collectors into one solar hybrid module (PVT-module) has been increasingly investigated. PVT-modules produce thermal and electrical energy at the same time. Since the efficiency of a photovoltaic module decreases with increasing temperature, the temperature of the heat transfer media is often limited to about 30 °C and the PVT-module is combined with a heat pump, which increases the temperature on the “warm side”. A common approach is to integrate the PVT-module directly as an evaporator in a heat pump system (PVT-direct).
This paper presents the development of a control strategy for a PVT-based CO2 heat pump that takes into account solar radiation, ambient temperature, wind speed, evaporator temperature and compressor power. The developed control strategy provides different operating modes depending on the solar radiation supply as well as the ambient temperature.