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Rank 2
January 21, 2025
Solved

Zubadan shows consumed hot water energy bigger than delivered hot water energy

  • January 21, 2025
  • 41 replies
  • 755 views

Hello! We have recently installed a 12kw Zubadan air heat pump in nov2024. I am not happy with the usage as we used thermostats and it consumed too much - but this is another topic. The issue now is that in january the consumed hot water energy is bigger than the delivered hot water energy: consumed DHW - 186 delivered DHW - 141. How is this possible? I don’t know how the settings are done for hot water, but this not seems physically possible. 
We have the model with the 200l hydrotank inside.

Best answer by juliamc

I think what you’re seeing with the flow and return temperatures is the heat pump cycling.

This graph shows an example of cycling on an Ecodan of a similar size to yours, its from a government trial which I was on.

The red and green lines show the flow and return temperatures. Cycling results in a poor COP and is a symptom of an oversized heat pump.

 

Your thermistor reading for TH1A is 26 deg, which I believe is the current room temperature, so I’m not sure why the heating is running at all when you took your previous photos. ​I need @M.isterW for more info on the heating WD curve etc.

41 replies

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 26, 2025

How did you stop the immersion ?

I think you should increase the HWtime from 62 mins to 90 mins.

Increase HWdrop from 6 mins to 10 mins.

Decrease HWtemp from 50 to 48.

juliamc
Rank 20
juliamcSolved
Rank 20
January 26, 2025

I think what you’re seeing with the flow and return temperatures is the heat pump cycling.

This graph shows an example of cycling on an Ecodan of a similar size to yours, its from a government trial which I was on.

The red and green lines show the flow and return temperatures. Cycling results in a poor COP and is a symptom of an oversized heat pump.

 

Your thermistor reading for TH1A is 26 deg, which I believe is the current room temperature, so I’m not sure why the heating is running at all when you took your previous photos. ​I need @M.isterW for more info on the heating WD curve etc.

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 27, 2025

Further to my comment above about cycling I think yours was cycling because the room temperature (26) was already above the target temperature (20) so it couldn’t get rid of the heat it was producing. I don’t know why the heat pump was running for heating though. 

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 27, 2025

Besided the HW changes, as last resort, we put the heating and HW on a scheduled timer...First hot water in the morning from 7 to 8.30 and then from 8.30 to 13.30 the heating...it worked continuously for heating from what I saw in the logs, so I am curious about the COP and the energy consumed. 

But I believe that even though is on schedule, it will do defrosting if needed at night, right?

I am not happy with a schedule for heating, this not something that I wanted, I am thinking now that it was better with the thermostats, at least I could change the temp for heating remotely and not going always at the pump…

I will see tonight if this experiment worked, until now there were all fails :))

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 27, 2025

Is the room temperature back to something comfortable ?

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 27, 2025

Yes, we keep it around 22-23 degrees, I will see how much it will drop these hours.

But I already checked and one night at around 0 outside the room with the termometer showed loss of 1 degree. So I did a math, and at 0 degrees in 24 hours should be 3 degrees loss, meaning 788W at our house volume and insulation. So the necessary would be 19kWh for 24h at 0 degrees…and those are thermic W, if the pump would work only with COP 1.5 and would need just 13kW.

And our pump consumes much more, even leaving aside HW. 
The person that installed said..it is ok..answered none of our questions, it is ok for him the consumed energy  and the delivered number he says that it is just not accurate. My problem is that he is comparing the consume for our house with other houses, but our is way better insulated…

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 27, 2025

I’m going to send you a private message… !

Peter E
Super User
Super User
January 29, 2025

Just to point out something about heat pumps, if they cycle a lot that significantly reduces the COP because each start up consumes energy without producing heat. That is certainly consistent with what we are seeing here. The question is why is it cycling so much and ​@juliamc may have given us the answer.

Reducing my yearly fossil fuel usage with an EV (-900 litres petrol), A2AHP (-8,700 kWh gas) and Timed Immersion heater (-1,500 kWh gas)
juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 29, 2025

I think there are a few things wrong with the installation, things that good installer can see which I’ve missed altogether. I’ve asked elsewhere about this and have some useful answers which I’ll try and summarise asap. Meanwhile Morana has arranged to get a second opinion locally. 

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 29, 2025

I agree that it might be cycling, but the thing is that the room temp should not be taken into consideration, as we don’t use auto adapt..I was expecting that the pump to look at the outside temp, the flow and return temp and adjust the heating acordingly..o