Currently, heating, cooling and hot water in residential buildings, offices, municipal public buildings (such as auditoriums, town halls, swimming pools) and shopping centres account for almost half of the building’s total electricity consumption. Improving the efficiency of HVAC systems in these buildings is therefore crucial for the energy transition and decarbonisation of cities in the EU.
The main objective of the AIGUAterm project is to analyse the technical and economic feasibility of the energy use of secondary water networks by means of heat pumps and to study the impact of their implementation in the secondary low-pressure network of the city of Valencia, developing an integral plan for the implementation of this thermal use.
To achieve these objectives, the AIGUAterm project will first evaluate the efficiency and feasibility of this solution through a pilot installation at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). This installation will provide real data on the operation of the system, allowing to address the technical challenges of the proposed solution and compare it with traditional air conditioning systems in the same building.
The project starts in November 2023 and has a duration of 27 months, with the participation of two research groups from the Universitat Politècnica de València: the Information and Communication Technologies Against Climate Change (ICTvsCC) group and the Water Technology Institute (ITA). The consortium is completed by the Instituto Tecnológico de la Energía (ITE), Geminis Tools and EMIVASA.
AIGUAterm is a project co-funded by the Agència Valenciana de la Innovació (AVI) and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Operational Programme for the Valencian Community 2021-2027 (INNEST/2023/412).
