Concise Cycle Test (CCT) method definition

TRI-HP EU project is aiming to develop trigeneration integrated solutions that combine heating, cooling and electricity
generation, based on heat pumps running with natural refrigerants and using multiple renewable energy
sources.

This deliverable describes the method used for testing two kinds of heat pump systems developed within the project under realistic dynamic conditions. Both systems contain heat pumps with natural refrigerants that have been developed within the project TRI-HP. The dual-source system, including a reversible heat pump that allows the use of ambient heat and ground source heat, has been developed for warm climates with high cooling demands. The ice-slurry system, using a combination of solarthermal collectors and an ice-slurry tank as source of a heat pump, has been developed for cooler climates with low cooling demand in summer.

The implementation of different energy sources for systems for space heating space heating (SH), space cooling and domestic hot water preparation often leads to a complex architecture of the overall system. The efciency of the resulting system is highly dependent on dynamic operating conditions due to transient on/off cycles, component interactions, thermal storage, hydraulic designs, overall system control, and other factors. Performance evaluation of such systems is not trivial and cannot be done via steady-state measurements of individual components. For this reason, measurements using the hardware-in-the-loop approach are performed in the TRI-HP project to test the performance of the newly developed systems.
A method called concise cycle test (CCT) has been developed at SPF and IREC for this purpose. This method was adapted to the systems to be tested and applied in the different variants at SPF as well as at IREC. The CCT shall show the behavior of a complete system for heating and cooling under real-life conditions at different days of the year. In TRI-HP, the functionality of the ice-slurry storage will be tested in the system test as well as the advanced energy management (AEM) control developed within the project. Therefore, the complete system is installed on a test rig. The test rig emulates a building, including the SH and cooling distribution system, the domestic hot water (DHW) draw offs, the solar collector eld and the photo voltaic (PV) installation. The system under test must act completely autonomously to cover the demand for heating and cooling of the building and the draw-offs during a test cycle. This test cycle is composed of a number of representative days of a real year. The selected days are put together to a consecutive test-cycle.