Review of Residential Low-Load HVAC Systems

In support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Building America Program, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) conducted an investigation to inventory commercially available HVAC technologies that are being installed in low-load homes. The first step in this investigation was to conduct a review of published literature to identify low-load HVAC technologies available in the United States and abroad, and document the findings of existing case studies that have evaluated the performance of the identified technologies. This report presents the findings of the literature review, identifies gaps in the literature or technical understanding that must be addressed before low-load HVAC technologies can be fully evaluated, and introduces PNNL’s planned research and analysis for this project to address identified gaps and potential future work on residential low-load HVAC systems.