Experimental study on the performance of multi-split heat pump system with thermal energy storage
Abstract Recently, electricity demand is increasing drastically compared to electric power supply. In particular, this trend is due to the demand for heating in winter, leading to the electricity peak consumption at any time of the day. In this study, a new heat pump system is proposed to address the imbalance between power supply and demand solving the electricity soaring problem. The suggested heat pump system uses thermal energy storage and discharge concept that is capable of continuous heating operation simultaneously. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of such a system, the dynamic performance change of the system was investigated by experimental study. From the results, it was shown that the performance of heat storage system was varied according to refrigerant mass flow rate branched to the heat storage tank. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the performance was reduced during the heat storage operation process, and it was improved during the discharge operation process. The overall performance is reduced taken as a whole, but it is meaningful that it disperses the electricity peak. As a result of this study, it is expected that the new thermal storage heat pump system can reduce the maximum power load.