In order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, global emissions must decrease at a high rate. Looking at the industrial sector, the largest share of energy is used for process heating, with fossil fuels as its primary source. A way to improve the energy efficiency and reduce the emissions of process heating is by the integration of heat pump technology.

However, operational costs are still a limiting factor in the widespread uptake of this technology. A potential of industrial heat pumps that will have a positive effect on the operational costs, as well as its general applicability, is the possibility to operate the equipment in a flexible manner. At this point, the potential to respond with high temperature industrial heat pumps to heat demand, the electricity market or to grid congestion, is not yet unlocked.

The focus in this study is on gaining more insight into the dynamic characteristics of industrial heat pump operation. The approach is based on the modeling of a 2 MW high temperature industrial heat pump in the Dymola simulation environment. Based on the system dynamics, a suitable control method is selected and the controller settings are optimized. With this control system in place, the dynamic limitations are studied.

The limiting factor in the considered economizer based heat pump cycle is the ability of the control system to keep the superheat at the screw compressor injection port within acceptable limits during load level changes. The heat pump is found to be able to ramp up and down at a maximum rate of approximately 20%/min. This level of flexibility allows use of the heat pump for both heat demand and electricity price response, as well as for participation in grid load balancing pools. On a higher level, based on these results flexible heat pump operation can be considered possible.