DualSun, a French photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) module manufacturer, presented a shingle black PVT product made for use with air-to-water heat pumps at the Energaia tradeshow, which took place last week in Montpellier, southwestern France.
“The Springer panel can be used with different brands and kinds of heat pumps,” the company's sales manager, Virgile Quintin, told pv magazine.
The module measures 1,722 mm x 1,134 x 71 mm and weighs 36.3 kg. It relies on 108 half-cut TOPCon solar cells and front glass with a thickness of 2 mm. It features a power output of 425 W and a power conversion efficiency of 21.8%, with open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current being 38.58 V and 13.83 A, respectively.
As for the solar thermal unit, it has a surface area of 1.95 m2 and a thermal power of 459 W/m2. Its liquid volume is 3.5 L and the maximum operating pressure is 6 bar.
The PVT panel can be utilized with heat pumps with an indoor unit containing a domestic hot water tank with a double exchanger or heat pumps with a space heating piping connected directly to the hydraulic module of the heat pump and for monobloc heat pumps containing domestic hot water tank with a double exchanger.
In this case, the system configuration requires the solar thermal system to be connected to the lower heat exchanger located at the bottom of the domestic hot water tank of the heat pump, with the heat pumps being provided by manufacturers such as Hitachi, Viessmann, and Airwell.
Furthermore, the module can also be used with heat pumps with an indoor unit that does not have a domestic hot water tank.
In this case, a double exchanger tank must be added upstream, with the upper heat exchanger being linked to the domestic hot water circuit of the heat pump and the lower exchanger being connected to the solar thermal circuit. The list of the selected manufacturers included the three above-mentioned producers plus Panasonic.
The PVT system is also compatible with heat pumps with an indoor unit containing a domestic hot water tank with a single exchanger.
This configuration requires a solar tank to be installed upstream and outside the integrated tank of the heat pump. The tank preheats the cold water inlet of the tank in the indoor heat pump unit and the PVT module is connected to the solar tank exchanger. The selected heat pump manufacturers for this solution are only Hitachi and Viessmann.
The panel comes with a 10-year product warranty and a 25-year performance warranty for the PV unit.
“The system energetical performance is on average 1.2 times higher than a traditional air-to-water heat pump heating solution,” Quintin stated. “When the panels are coupled with a heat pump, the heat exchange between the photovoltaic cells and the heat exchanger makes the cells operate at a lower temperature than simple photovoltaic panels, and therefore at a higher efficiency.”
