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Impact of installation faults in air conditioners and heat pumps in single-family homes on U.S. energy usage

Author

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  • Winkler, Jon
  • Das, Saptarshi
  • Earle, Lieko
  • Burkett, Lena
  • Robertson, Joseph
  • Roberts, David
  • Booten, Charles

Abstract

To ensure that new residential air conditioners and heat pumps operate optimally, care must be taken during the initial system design and installation to avoid missteps that immediately degrade a system’s performance. Laboratory and simulation studies have quantified the impact that faults can have on capacity and efficiency. Field studies have demonstrated that installation-related faults are commonplace. However, the national impact of installation-related faults cannot be accurately estimated by only simulating a limited number of homes at several fault levels because of the variety of home characteristics and climates involved. In our analysis, we use an improved residential building stock simulation tool to predict the annual energy increase and additional utility costs resulting from two common installation faults: indoor airflow rate and refrigerant charge level. Our method considers the wide range of building characteristics and climate zones of the U.S. housing stock. We use existing field data to develop fault intensity probability distributions to inform our analysis. The analysis shows that these two faults result in approximately 20.7 TWh/y of additional energy use for central air conditioners and air-source heat pumps in U.S. single-family detached homes, which is a 9% increase over baseline (no-fault) usage, costing homeowners approximately $2.5 billion annually on utility bills. Air-source heat pumps are responsible for a disproportionate fraction of this energy use increase because of the larger number of operating hours compared to central air conditioners and the sensitivity of heating mode performance to the faults analyzed compared to cooling mode.

Suggested Citation

  • Winkler, Jon & Das, Saptarshi & Earle, Lieko & Burkett, Lena & Robertson, Joseph & Roberts, David & Booten, Charles, 2020. "Impact of installation faults in air conditioners and heat pumps in single-family homes on U.S. energy usage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:278:y:2020:i:c:s030626192031045x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115533
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Zhang, Rongpeng & Hong, Tianzhen, 2017. "Modeling of HVAC operational faults in building performance simulation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 178-188.
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    1. Guo, Yabin & Li, Yuduo & Li, Weilin, 2023. "On-site fault experiment and diagnosis research of the carbon dioxide transcritical heat pump system for energy saving," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 274(C).
    2. Weigert, Andreas & Hopf, Konstantin & Günther, Sebastian A. & Staake, Thorsten, 2022. "Heat pump inspections result in large energy savings when a pre-selection of households is performed: A promising use case of smart meter data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).

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