14 kW air-to-water vapor-compression electric heat pump and refrigerating system operating in southern Italy: field vs. rated performance

Air-to-water vapor-compression electric heat pumps (HPs) and refrigerating systems (RSs) are widely viewed as a key technology for energy saving and decarbonization of the building sector. In Europe, product energy perfor-mance rating is a mandatory requirement for any manufacturer; however, several scientific studies highlighted a relevant gap between rated and field performance with field results considerably lower than rated data; therefore, there remains a need to clearly define this gap. In this paper, the field per-formance of commercial 14 kW monobloc vapor-compression air-to-water electric HP and RS during both winter and summer of southern Italy have been measured, analyzed and compared with the performance suggested by the manufacturer in order to assess the difference between real operation and rated data. The comparison highlighted that rated data are better than field performance by (i) at least 49.7% in the case of the RS during summer and (ii) at least 26.6% for the HP during summer.