Analysis of a typical winter day in France for a photovoltaic-thermal and a heat pump coupling system for heating greenhouses.

In modern agriculture, vegetables growth in greenhouses is valuable to adapt to customers preferences and climate changes. As most of the greenhouses are still heated by gas, the energy production from renewable sources is a axis of development in this field. The purpose of this study is to present the potentiality of an innovative heating system for greenhouse with photovoltaic-thermal solar PVT panels as a unique cold source for a brine/water heat pump. An analysis was made for the solar radiation in a typical winter day with the PolySun software for a 6,000 m² greenhouse in Angers, France. In this paper, the results show to interesting potential of this renewable coupling to cover a large part of the needs for this typical winter day, but also the difficulty to reach a autonomy as it is, which calls for optimizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]