Commissioning and Experimental Analysis of Heat Pumps' Performance

Nowadays, heat pumps represent one of the most innovative and high performance available technologies. Applied on HVAC plants, which require the 6% of European total electric energy demand, these can strongly reduce the consumption. However the higher difficulty of control and a lack of standards can bring to efficiency lower than the real possibility. Commissioning processes are developed to optimize the efficiency of an HVAC plant in each operating condition. This work analyzes what is already usually done in Italy during the first phase of the project (design, construction and start up) and during the operating life. A detailed analysis concerns the start up of typical medium plants, in which is concentrated a large part of the initial commissioning. The procedures used both by installers and commissioning agents are described in detail. In general, all rules are respected and the correct functioning of each plant demonstrates the good work of the technician we followed. Then, different data surveys and analyses are proposed to improve the commissioning level. Each of these requires a different value of time, testing frequency, number of parameters, and complexity of instruments. Some data captures are done during the start up, while mostly they are conducted during the ongoing commissioning. The data analysis has demonstrated as each survey can give a different range of information, so all are useful. In conclusion, this kind of testing is strictly recomended on sample plants to technicians and engineers in order to better understand the equipment they usually install, while it can result expensive for the owner if made on working plants.