PERFORMANCE OF A LOW-ENERGY HOUSE IN A MILD COOLING SEASON .2. THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF THE HEAT-PUMP

A low-energy house located in Halifax, Canada was monitored for a year using a computerized data acquisition system. Data on indoor and outd oor temperatures, relative humidities, and power consumption were coll ected for a whole year. The results of the analysis of the cooling sea son data from the heat pump system are presented in this paper. The an alysis of the data indicated that a large part of the latent cooling d one by the heat pump was subsequently converted to sensible cooling as a result of the evaporation of the condensate from the indoor coil. I t was found that 25% of the total sensible cooling supplied to the hou se during the cooling season was as a result of the conversion of late nt cooling to sensible cooling. This phenomenon has important implicat ions in design, operation, and modelling of heat pumps and cooling sys tems with direct expansion coils. The seasonal EER of cooling was 1.95 , and the total power consumption was 1194 kWh with a corresponding co st of Can$ 84. It was also found that temperature set-up during unoccu pied periods did not result in any savings in the daily power consumpt ion.