This work aims at the development and the experimental characterization of new applications for adsorption heat pumps and chillers driven by industrial waste heat or renewable sources that can provide heating and/or cooling. Adsorption technologies offer the advantage of providing heating and cooling from low temperature sources below 100 °C without using refrigerant with high Global Warming Potential and with very low electricity consumption. Therefore, the technology enables the use of large untapped heat sources, increasing the energy efficiency of the heating and cooling sector with very limited impact on the environment. Several applications were investigated numerically for Switzerland using a simplified model of an adsorption heat pump. Four scenarios were identified as interesting: (1) the valorization of low-grade industrial waste heat in district heating networks, (2) energy efficiency improvement of district heating substations, (3) an autonomous adsorption heat pump with a wood pellets burner and (4) cooling applications. These scenarios were experimentally validated with a laboratory test of a commercial silica gel/water machine. Results show that there is a gap of up to 40% between the prediction of the simplified model and the experimental results. Therefore, there is huge potential to improve the performances of this commercial unit for these applications.

ISO 24194:2022, the first standard specifically designed to assess the operational performance of solar thermal collector arrays, is likely to have substantial impact on the entire solar thermal industry. This standard introduces the Power Check, a method that can be used for monitoring ongoing plant operation and for checking performance guarantees. However, its practical use is presently limited, as initial applications indicate a need for clarification, and it exists as a mere paper description, rendering it less accessible for plant designers and operators. Furthermore, any implementation necessitates practical decisions regarding data handling and algorithm implementation. Closed-source implementations, lacking a traceable and transparent framework, could lead to inconsistent results. To address these issues, this paper introduces SunPeek, an open-source software that provides a reference implementation of the ISO 24194 Power Check. SunPeek is freely accessible for both scientific and commercial purposes. This paper also discusses existing limitations of ISO 24194 and showcases five examples of SunPeek applied to real-life solar thermal plants. This underscores potential practical challenges, such as handling stagnation events, and highlights methodological progress, such as improved data filtering for performance analyses. The findings and applications indicate SunPeek’s usability and the high potential for ISO 24194-based performance monitoring of solar thermal plants.

In the context of growing interest in decentralised multi energy systems, this work aims at quantifying the benefit of optimized energy concepts for energy communities at the neighbourhood scale compared to individually optimized solution. To tackle this question a multi-objective optimization framework was developed and applied to a case study of 6 buildings consisting of 85% of residential dwellings and 15% to retail shop and food stores. Grouped buildings have decreased costs and greenhouse gases emissions (GHGE) respectively by 18% and 12% in the cost optimum compared to individual buildings. In the environmental optimum, costs have decreased by 11%, while GHGE remains in the same range. This decrease is at both optimum driven by electricity prices favourable to large consumers since exchanges on the electrical microgrid for this neighbourhood is very small. Optimal decrease of GHGE is obtained with greater use of HPs and smaller natural gas consumption. This work illustrates the interest of multi-objective approaches to identify optimal energy solutions for groups of buildings.