August 24, 2022
◼ Successful transition to renewable energies
A four-person household in Belgium covers its hot water demand in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way with AC•THOR.
For the residents of a single-family house, a family with two teenage children, in the Belgian town of Huldenberg, there is a relatively large demand for hot water. A 360 litre hot water tank is heated by AC•THOR via a 3 kW immersion heater. The electricity hereby is supplied from the photovoltaic system on the roof of the detached house.
It is of course important to the residents of the house to maintain a desired minimum temperature at night as well as during cloudy times. The hot water backup of the AC•THOR ensures hot water even on less sunny days. The set temperature is reached even if there was only little sunshine the day before. This way, full comfort for the residents is always ensured.
An investment in the environment
Switching to renewable energies is straightforward and easy. In the months from March to September, the pellet boiler that previously heated the house is switched off. The pellet heating is only used in winter, as burning pellets during the summer months is neither profitable nor environmentally friendly. It makes much more sense to use the excess energy from your own photovoltaic system. AC•THOR can be easily integrated with the immersion heater into the existing pellet heating system for hot water preparation.
Significant cost savings due to increased self-consumption
The project shows that switching to sustainable energy generation not only benefits the environment, but also the household budget. With a solution like AC•THOR, around 7.5 kWh of photovoltaic electricity is self-consumed daily. From an economic point of view, this is a saving of between 3 and 4 euros per day, i.e. over the year this results in savings of approximately 1,000 euros, which can be generated by an increased self-consumption of photovoltaic electricity from the roof.
Awareness for the numerous benefits of photovoltaically supported heating system is becoming stronger. The Belgian company Group VHC, which carried out this project, has also noticed a steady increase in the installation of photovoltaic-assisted heating. More examples of such successful projects using my-PV products can be read here.