Assessment of Solar Assisted Heat Pump Configurations in Canada

This thesis discusses the energy savings, performance, and cost savings of various SAHP typologies in Canada, focusing on parallel systems. Typologies are evaluated for two detached housing archetypes, across a variety of Canadian climates. Modelling takes place in two stages. A first stage using a spreadsheet tool to determine which typology holds the most potential followed by a more detailed second stage in TRNSYS to investigate it. The first stage found that parallel SAHPs hold the most potential. The second stage found that parallel systems provided significant savings across all cities and housing archetypes. A combination of SDHW and ASHP outperformed the parallel system at low collector areas. However, no predicted savings were high enough to payback the predicted installation costs. This document explains the models, assumptions, and results. Recommendations are discussed for future research on system sizing, typologies of interest, heat pump modelling, and component costing.