There are many Dutch companies which develop, test and launch products and services in the field of heat pump technology. The Netherlands are innovative with this technology in different fields: building houses, offices, horticulture and industry.
Eneco would like to support the companies that create these innovations and show their appreciation via handing out the Dutch Innovation Award at the Heat Pump Conference 2017.
To compete for the award, the innovation must have been launched in the past three years (from 2014 on) or will be ready to be launched on the market soon. These innovations include technological or product innovations and everything that is associated with this. On top of that, also system innovations to improve the implementation of the technique in the environment are included for this award.
After the call send out March 2017 the committee received 10 proposals. An independent jury selected three innovations to present their innovation at the Wednesday lunch session, being One Solution Holland, Rijswijk Buiten and Triple Aqua.
After counting the votes from the participants Triple Aqua was awarded the Eneco Dutch Innovation Award handed over by mr Gijs Postma director of Eneco at the ceremony at the Conference Dinner in the Laurens Kerk.
Triple Aqua. www.tripleaqua.com
The patented TripleAqua is a three-pipe natural heat pump and climate system, fully developed in the Netherlands. It can heat and cool and store thermal energy in one go. While sales rooms or offices are heated, refrigerators and freezers are also cooled and excess cold or warm energy is transferred or stored in PCM latent heat. The exchange and passive storage of thermal energy results in great cost savings for three reasons:
1 Exchange and Save energy. Heat is generated during any cooling process, cold is generated during heating. TripleAqua always exchanges this heat and cold for use in a different area or stores the energy for free future use – without additional costs. Heating and cooling at the same time, or in time delayed, is no longer a loss but a free fact.
2 Just three water pipes. Unlike 4 pipe water systems, three water lines connect the central heat pump to all room units. Each at an ideal, moderate temperature with lowest differences: Warm (at 28 to 36°C), Cold (at 12 to 18°C) and one common return line at building temperature. This has become possible as the room units are equipped with ultra-efficient mini-pipe heat exchangers, able to transfer all water energy into the room air. By deleting a full water return pipe, installation costs are reduced by 25%.
3 No four-way valves. The new design of the heat pump makes the use of traditional four-way valves obsolete. TripleAqua works both in cooling and/or in heating mode, always in the efficient countercurrent operating mode. All year through. Thus, all known disadvantages of the 4 way valve are history. The unique system design of the three pipe water heat pump with its condensor-evaporator-combined heat exchanger lay-out is patented.
The development of this heat pump has also been made possible with thanks to many European innovative suppliers: Main components inside the TripleAqua heat pump: two separated Bitzer HC-compressors, Danfoss VLT, Emerson controls, Rosenberg EC Fans, LUVE mini-pipe heat exchangers, PCM storage and less than 5 kg of Propæne charge per system. The indoor units are controlled by the latest Siemens technology, self-adjusting Danfoss ABQM control valves, Camfil Micro M5 air filters and EC fans, not sensible for air pressure changes.
One Solution Holland (www.oshbv.nl) delivers a plug & play heat pump concept called ONE. The standardized ONE units, available in a range from 60 kW to 2 MW, are assembled in the OSH factory. Once completed and tested, the units will be transported to the construction site at which they can be installed in a single day. In addition to lower installation (and possible failure) costs, this concept provides flexibility in the construction process. Once an installation space has been finished, the ONE can be installed and connected to an ATES or other source loop.
Rijswijk Buiten, Energy Costs Zero Houses. Based on an energy masterplan1), the municipality of Rijswijk decided in 2010 to develop a new, all-electric district with 3,500 Zero Energy Dwellings. Since 2013, approx. 500 dwellings have been built and are now occupied; the district continues to develop quickly. The dwellings are well insulated: there is a heat recovery system in place for both shower and ventilation, a ground source heat pump and 3 kWp of solar panels. RijswijkBuiten, as this well-known project is called, is the first district in the Netherlands where sustainable energy ambitions on this scale have been realized.
The monitoring and research results of the dwellings that have been occupied for more than one year are, both in terms of energy consumption and customer satisfaction, excellent. For the next phase of construction, plans are currently in the works to further enhance energy efficiency. In addition, energy demand management, battery-powered energy storage and ready access to electrical vehicles will all be incorporated into future developments.
A special characteristic of the RijswijkBuiten project is that heat pumps and the solar panels are rented by the house owner from an EsCo for € 100 per month. The EsCo provides a 25-year guarantee that the installation will work properly and that the energy required for space heating, domestic hot water and cooling is completely covered by the production from the solar panels.