LB-17-C031 -- Design and Pilot Testing of a Residential Chilled Water Thermal Storage System as Part of a Net Zero Energy and Water House PDF

This paper discusses the design and pilot testing of an integrated thermal energy and rainwater storage (or ITHERST) system for a small residential house. This system was designed and built by students as part of University of Texas (UT) and Technical University of Munich (TUM) team entry to the Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2015 competition. After the competition, as a follow-up research project for the Texas State Energy Conservation Office, we retrofitted the thermal storage portion of the ITHERST system to a test house facility in Austin, Texas to evaluate its real-world operability and benchmark the performance of this prototype system. This paper summarizes the system design, describes the testing process and preliminary results, and concludes the report with a discussion on lessons learned and future work.