The SunHorizon project is a “Demonstration-to-market”, which aims to identify the ultimate technical and non-technical barriers to be overcome before the commercialization of the products in 2023-2025.
The project will install SunHorizon TPs in different type of buildings and climates to evaluate climatic and energy market solutions towards Technology Package (TP) techno-economic feasibility assessment. They will test the hardware, smart monitoring and management tools in different contexts and countries. Indeed, SunHorizon includes eight demonstrators, in nine different buildings. Moreover, a robust and wide EU demonstration campaign will be performed for 18 months to have two compete heating seasons monitored for benchmarking.
Demo sites will be also open for demo visits during SunHorizon Open Days part of the project dissemination plan.
SunHorizon demonstrators will tackle the demonstration of optimised, cost-effective H&C components and their coupling (i.e. technology packages) in different operational (TRL 7) environments across EU:
- Cold climate (C): Riga (Latvia), Berlin and Nürnberg (Germany)
- Average climate (A): Madrid (Spain) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania)
- Warm climate (W): San Cugat del Vallès (Spain)
The project will evaluate also different energy market solutions:
- Small and large scale residential (single house and apartment blocks)
- Tertiary buildings (public buildings, sport centers)
The spatial distribution of the demo cases, together with the consideration of most common residential and tertiary building typologies, will ensure a swift and straightforward replication of the SunHorizon results all across EU.
| N° | Demo sites | Climate | Building type | TP | Results from simulations |
| 1 | Berlin, Germany | Cold | Small residential | TP1 | 32% of primary energy savings 25% renewable energy ration 578 EUR/year cost bills reduction |
| 2 | Nürnberg, Germany | Cold | Large residential | TP2 | ~ 22% of primary energy 31% GHG emissions savings 15% renewable energy savings 32% cost bills reduction |
| 3 | Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain | Warm | Tertiary (civic centre) | TP3 | ~5-50% of primary energy savings** according to the position (high / medium / low solar zone) |
| 4 | Madrid, Spain | Average | Large residential | TP4 | ~76% of primary energy 84% of costs savings 37% of self-consumption ratio from PV |
| 5 | Cluj-Napoca, Romania | Cold | Dormitory | TP1 | Not in the monitoring phase yet |
| 6 | Riga, Latvia | Cold | Small residential | TP2 | ~37% of primary energy and costs savings 43% of self-consumption ratio from PV |
The TP5, composed of mixed solar-driven and parallel integration, is only tested in simulation. This consists of 3 locations and 2 types of buildings (tertiary and apartment buildings).
** Compared with air handling unit supplied by an old reversible heat pump