In design, control and installation of combined heating systems with solar energy utilization various tools are required in assuring rationality and cost effectiveness. A project was therefore initiated to develop such tools involving (a) building of a full scale plant for tests of combined heating systems containing solar collectors, pellet boilers, heat pumps and heat stores, (b) evaluation of system performance for some combined heating systems with varying control strategies through measurement, and (c) development of a user-friendly data soft ware tool for evaluating system performance of the kind of combined heating systems studied.

Results so far include building of the test plant and start of measurements of system and component thermal performance making use of the test plant. A TRNSYS deck of the system has been designed, and will be used for further investigations. From the results it can be concluded that user-friendly TRNSED data software would be possible to accomplish for calculation of thermal performance but also of economy, and climatic performance of combi-heating systems to best serve the needs expressed by the industrial partners of the project.