Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain

Sant Cugat del Vallès (Spain)

Demo responsible: Veolia (VEO) and Ajuntament de Sant Cugat del Vallès (AJSCV)

Type of building: Tertiary civic center. The total surface is 2.440,25 m2 on one floor.

Demonstration action:

• TP3, Solar-driven HP: Solar thermal (TVP) drives the thermal compressor of the adsorption chiller (FAHRENHEIT) with increased efficiency to provide 50kW cooling capacity with existing 93 kW chiller on the existing cooling distribution HP boiler Adsorption chiller Reversible HP Solar thermal PV Thermal Energy Storage RES installed¹⁴ — 50 kW — 189 kW — 10,000 l 224 kW
• Installation of solar panels on flat roof and connections to gallery room
• Installation of solar thermal tank and chiller in the gallery
• Integrated control system for the smart operation of H&C system
• High performance in cooling operation thanks to solar thermal (TVP) and thermal energy storage (RATIOTHERM) to run hybrid adsorption chiller (FAHRENHEIT) at the highest efficiency

Installation of TP3 components in Sant Cugat del Vallès.

Furthermore, these are the main components:

Some technical notions:

35.5_SH/83.8_SC MWh demand :

• 220 m² TVP LTpower panels
• 10 m³ buffer tank Ratiotherm
• 50_VCV/20_SORP kW Fahrenheit hybrid chiller
• f_sav,GHG = 33%, and 35% of cost sav.

Replicability potential:

• Medium scale tertiary buildings and residential. New and renovated buildings
• Sunny climates

Technical and social risks & difficulties

The initial assessment is that there is very limited risk in coupling both innovations (i.e. HP boiler and solar hybrid PV-T). However, several challenges were observed during deployment phase:

• Minor budget deviations due the rental of cranes and common material

• The installation of an exchanger in the heat stage has been foreseen to reduce the inlet temperature of the existing hot water heat pump. Temperatures of 70 to 95ºC were not admissible at the inlet of the heat pump

• The solar panels total surface and distribution had to be adjusted according to the real roof surface.

• Difficulties to integrate the different monitoring system from different equipment

• The system had to manage some civil works to adapt to the big volume of the thermal tank and some reinforcement had to be performed to support the solar field and the tanks

• The technical room needs minor adaptations like to increase the passage width for the entrance of the equipment (basically the chillers) and opening wall passages for the interconnection between the thermal tank and the chillers

Difficulties encountered:

• To find the optimal design for solar collector surface
• The scalability of the system

Estimated savings:

With regards to the solar zone identified in D2.2, the expected primary energy saving ranges for TP5, calculated by considering a standard heat pump, are:

• High solar zone: 30-50%
• Medium solar zone: 20-40%
• Low solar zone: 5-25%

For the primary energy saving calculation, only cooling operation was considered.

Lessons learnt:

• Reinforcement of the floor was needed for the storage, which was not foreseen at the proposal stage

• The TVP will allow to reduce the consumption from the existing heat pump, provide nearly all heating in Winter.