Water Heating Performance Comparison of Heat Pump Water Heater, Flat Plate Solar Collector and LPG Boiler Systems for North Cyprus Climate Conditions

This work comparatively investigates three different water heating technologies, used in residential buildings, for a particular location, climate and certain amount of hot water usage. Investigated technologies are Solar Water Heater (SWH), Heat Pump Water Heater (HPWH) and Indirect Gas Heater (IGH). Annual energy analysis simulation is performed by employing EnergyPlus software. It is an open source program, developed by the USA Department of Energy, and used in many researches and projects. Energy simulations are performed for Cyprus weather conditions, by utilizing weather file for Larnaca city (34.9003° N, 33.6232° E). It is considered that in a residential building there is one family with five people and each person consumes 50 L of hot water every day. Total capacity of the hot water tank is assumed to be 250 L. After annual simulation, the results in terms of energy consumption for SWH, HPWH and IGH are found to be 8.05 GJ, 4.08 GJ and 11.95 GJ respectively. This values are used in economic analysis. When comparing SWH with IGH, the results obtained from the economic analyses for Net Present Value (NPV), Savings-to-Investment Ratio (SIR), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Simple Payback Period (SPP) are $273, 1.5, 15% and 6.5 years, accordingly. Comparison of HPWH and IGH produced the following values, NPV ($1050), SIR (1.9), IRR (20%) and SPP (4.7). HPWH is compared to SWH and economic analysis results are $807, 2.4, 26% and 3.7 years for NPV, SIR, IRR and SPP respectively. The HPWH is the most economic technology, according to economic and technical analyses results.