A seasonal efficiency index STER for polyvalent units?
19 February 2024
Good news for all polyvalent units in the Cooling & Heating sector: a STER index proposal has reached the goal of being officially formalised and presented to the main trade associations.
4-pipes units are being compared to chillers and heat pumps at the regulatory level, and this results in a significant omission of their true added value, which is their ability to recover heat, a property that has so far been ignored by the regulations. Currently, polyvalent units are subject to Regulations (EU) 813/2013 below 400kW and 2016/2281 above 400kW, which penalise polyvalent units that do not fully account for the benefits of heat recovery.
The STER Index project introduces the discussion of a seasonal index to restore the single value of polyvalent units and to finally show the real benefits of this type of unit, with the ultimate goal of creating specific rules and standards for this segment. Unfortunately, until now this segment has not been adequately identified by the various rules and regulations and has had to fall alternately under the various chiller or heat pump programmes. But when polyvalent units have to follow the regulations for chillers or heat pumps, this sometimes leads to not using the best of this technology.
This is a long process, but if a STER index is approved, it would definitely change the HVAC landscape.
