Abstract
Renewable energy resources have become important because of the increasing costs of fossil fuels.
Up to now there has been little deregulation of the fossil fuel market and, therefore, the customer is not in the same position as with the electricity market where there is competition and an incentive to shop around for the best supplier. A good strategy for the customer is therefore to become less dependent on fossil fuels by installing renewable energy systems such as solar-assisted heat pumps. Significant research has been carried out in the field of solar-assisted heat pump system since the 70s but most of the technologies developed have stayed at the research level due to two primary reasons, namely poor control strategies and the inability to keep operating temperatures high enough to realize high coefficients of performance over the full year. Within the frame of the EC funded Endohousing project these issues are being investigated. The research focuses on the development of a system comprising a new unglazed solar roof collector and hi-tech control strategies to manage the effective movement of thermal energy in different sections of the system. The project has set up three houses using the endothermic technology. This paper is concerned with the initial set up, commissioning and run in of the systems. An evaluation of the first results of the technology is presented so that overall system optimisation can follow.