Commercial and Industrial Clean Heat Overview

Heat pumps are the latest in technology to keep your business comfortable year-round. They’re environmentally friendly, extremely efficient, and affordable to operate. When paired with envelope upgrades, advanced controls, energy recovery or heat recovery ventilators, heat pumps can reduce your business’ energy use, which saves maintenance costs and improves your bottom line.

How it Works

Heat pumps pull heat from the air or from underground and use it to heat your building in the colder months. They flow in reverse and use a refrigerant to cool your building in the warmer months.

Heat Pump Benefits

• Up to 3X more efficient than oil-fueled systems
• Dual heat and cooling
• Low maintenance costs
• Whisper quiet
• Lower emissions
• Air filtration and dehumidification
• Easy to operate
• Personalized comfort control

Heat Pump Types

Ground-Source

Ground-source heat pumps (also known as geothermal) transfer heat stored in the earth into your building during the winter and transfer it out and back into the ground during the summer to keep your space cool.

Dedicated water-to-water heat pump systems can also produce hot water by transferring excess heat from the pump’s compressor to your building’s hot water tank.

Ground-source includes three principal components:

1. Ground Loop
   A series of connected pipes buried in the ground circulate water to absorb heat from, or relinquish heat to, the surrounding soil, depending on whether the system provides heat or cooling. In other words, the system uses the earth as a heat source during winter and a heat sink during summer.
2. Heat Pump
   The mechanical system that compresses a refrigerant to move heat into or out of a building efficiently. During winter, the heat pump removes heat from the water in the ground loop and transfers it to the building. During summer, the process is reversed.
3. Heat Distribution
   Subsystem Conventional ductwork is generally used to distribute heated or cooled air from the geothermal heat pump throughout the building.

Air-Source

An air-source heat pump moves existing heat in the air from one place to another using electricity. In summer, it moves heat from inside a building to the outside like an air conditioner. In winter, it works in reverse, extracting heat from outside to bring it into a building.

A central air-source heat pump is excellent for buildings with existing central air-conditioner systems that need to be replaced or new construction projects. A heat pump can also provide heat in the winter, supplementing your furnace, baseboard heating, or radiator and increasing the lifespan of your heating equipment.

Have a drafty room or need to renovate just one unit? A ductless mini-split is a small, standalone air-source heat pump that is easy to install and offers more design flexibility since indoor air handlers can be suspended from a ceiling or hung on a wall.

Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF)

VRF uses heat pump technology to circulate refrigerant to one or multiple indoor units, allowing for simultaneous heating and cooling in different zones and personalized comfort control.

By using refrigerant to move heat throughout a building, as opposed to water or air, and adjusting the flow of refrigerant continually based on the energy needs of each indoor unit, VRF systems operate more efficiently than traditional HVAC systems.

Heat Pump Water Heater

Heat pump water heaters are up to three times more energy efficient than conventional electric resistance water heaters since they use electricity to move heat from one place to another instead of generating heat directly.

The system works like a refrigerator in reverse. While a refrigerator pulls heat from inside and releases it into the surrounding room, a heat pump water heater pulls heat from the surrounding air and releases it—at a higher temperature—into a tank to warm up the water inside.