Heat pumps combined with solar panels
Heat pumps can be combined with solar panels and energy storage for efficiency and energy independence
Installing solar PV panels with your heat pump can help power your heat pump with "free" green electricity and help reduce your dependence on the mains grid and exposure to energy price fluctuations. STIEBEL ELTRON has partnered with SOLARWATT to make integrating solar PV and energy storage with your heat pump simple.
Why use photovolatic panels with heat pumps?
There is a perfect synergy between producing electricity from solar panels and using it for a heat pump.
Heat pumps use electrical energy to extract heat from the environment to heat your home and hot water.
Generating electricity at point of use is more efficient than transporting it across the mains grid and means your electricity is 100% fom renewable sources and making your whole heating system have a lower carbon footprint.
Generating your own electiricty also means reducing your dependence on the grid and helps to insulate you from price increases in the cost of energy.
SOLARWATT and STIEBEL ELTRON help you maximise your use of solar
The tried and tested integration between SOLARWATT energy management and STIEBEL ELTRON products guarantees the highest possible use of your own solar power to reduce the operating costs of the heat pump and other electrical appliances in your home.
With the SOLARWATT Manager portal, you can keep quickly find out how much surplus solar power your heat pump is actually consuming.
Alongside their solar panels and energy management systems SOLARWATT also offer battery storage to maximise your energy independence, so you can have a complete solution that has been fully tested for seamless integrations.
As two market leaders for quality and efficiency you can be sure that your complete system will have outstanding reliability and perform even in the most challenging of conditions.
- Direct communication between SOLARWATT and STIEBEL ELTRON appliances
- The thermal energy management system uses photovoltaic and weather forecasts to create customised heat pump schedules for your building. Wherever possible, heat is always generated and stored when solar power is available.
- Quick and easy connection through an internet LAN connection
- In addition, the heat pump can directly adapt its output to the available photovoltaic generation, for example even when there is little excess solar power, across a broad spectrum.
How the heat pumps and solar panels are combined
At the heart of the collaboration is STIEBEL ELTRON’s EM Trend and Solarwatt's advanced Manager flex, with both components optimising the system and supporting energy storage
The state-of-the-art technologies will integrate STIEBEL ELTRON’s heat pumps and Solarwatt’s solar panels to deliver unparalleled optimisation during changing weather conditions on a day-to-day basis.
The EM Trend provides optimised use of solar power to operate heat pumps and delivers efficient use of real energy surplus from the PV system.
Meanwhile, the EM Trend will work alongside the Manager flex to look ahead at weather forecasts and will apply dynamic adjustments in real time.
For example, where cold weather is predicted the EM Trend will store more heat in the buffer and hot water tanks to maximise efficiency and response times, helping to lower heating and hot water preparation costs by using solar power to do this.
As a result, the two systems combined will optimise energy consumption in response to changing weather conditions to utilise energy generated from Solarwatt’s solar panels more effectively.
A first-of-its-kind offering to the UK, the partnership has a proven track record, having been implemented successfully in Germany, where both companies are originally based.