Optimizing Energy in Single-Family Homes
From Biomass Boilers to Heat Pumps
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52825/isec.v2i.3369Keywords:
Energy Management System, Model Predictive Control, Sector Coupling, FlexibilityAbstract
Many different components for heat or electricity generation have been installed in single-family homes in recent years.
The efficient use of the controllable components while harvesting the volatile renewable sources and satisfying the energy consumption has become increasingly difficult.
For this, we developed a modular, predictive, optimization-based supervisory control framework now deployed in hundreds of single-family homes.
While initially targeting systems with biomass boilers and thermal storage, the focus has recently been extended to heat pumps.
However, this shift is not straightforward, since heat pumps are typically paired with smaller buffer sizes, limiting flexibility.
At the same time, heat pumps also provide new optimization potential, e.g. making use of varying electricity prices and coefficients of performance.
In this contribution, we present results from real-world implementations and discuss the operational differences that arise when transitioning from biomass boilers to heat pumps.
The findings demonstrate that optimization strategies must be adapted to system flexibility and storage characteristics, highlighting key requirements for the effective predictive control of residential multi-energy systems.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Astrid Leitner, Bernd Riederer, Andreas Moser, Daniel Muschick, Valentin Kaisermayer, Jakob Fuchsberger, Christopher Zemann, Markus Gölles
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Funding data
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Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft
Grant numbers Basisprogramm FO999901468;Basisprogramm FO999913247 -
Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft
Grant numbers COMET - Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies Programme No. 892426