Solutions were sought to improve the energy efficiency of, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with, space and water heating systems in Department of Defense (DoD) buildings. The DoD owns and operates hundreds of thousands of facilities across a wide range of climate zones where space and water heating can contribute to over 45% of a building’s energy consumption¹. Solutions were sought that are life-cycle cost-effective and broadly applicable to DoD buildings. Of particular interest were solutions to expand the use of air-source heat pumps (HP) and heat pump water heaters (HPWH). The DoD has many electric air-source HPs in its current inventory of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems and continues to consider HPs when replacing packaged HVAC units. However, new HP technology and changing economic factors are expanding the conditions where HP systems are economically and technically feasible. ESTCP sought proposals for demonstrations of new HP and HPWH technologies, or solutions that accelerate the deployment of traditional HP technologies².

ESTCP was open to all proposals relevant to the objective of the topic; however, solutions with the following characteristics were of particular interest:

• Use of low global warming potential refrigerants.
• Simple integration with incumbent facility HVAC and water systems.
• Improved air-source HP performance in colder climates.
• Integrated electrical peak demand management.
• Low operations and maintenance costs

¹ U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2012). Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS). Retrieved from https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/
² See solicitation Topic D9 for related background on packaged HVAC system management

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