Triple Solar - Sustainable heating and cooling with the PVT heat pump

The Triple Solar PVT heat pump system combines traditional solar panels (PV) with the functionality of an outdoor unit of an air/water heat pump (T).

The product design and engineering are fully compliant with the IEC 60335 standard for automatic electric controls.

Concept design

System design

Implementation

Industrialization

Manufacturing

Zign has been selected by Triple Solar to develop and manufacture all electronics (PCBA's and embedded software) for the control system, and to provide a platform for Triple Solar’s development of control logic. We supported Triple Solar with the certification of the heat pump system for EMC, safety and security.

Concept design

During the concept design phase, we investigated whether embedded Linux could meet the requirements of the new PVT heat pump system and assessed its impact on hardware. We decided to use a specific System-on-Module (SOM) family as the foundation for the electronics design, along with a software architecture based on Yocto.

System design

A rudimentary proof-of-concept control platform was developed using development kits and off-the-shelf components to interface with sensors and actuators. This approach allowed us to evaluate the concept design choices and further develop a system design that meets modularity requirements, using IO boards connected via an RS485 bus system.

Implementation

Building on the proof-of-concept system, we developed the hardware and software implementations for each interface and functionality of the control platform, one step at a time. Through continuous integration, we consistently demonstrated the correctness of each implementation while adding new electronic components and software features to the system.

Industrialization

The industrialization phase prepares the Triple Solar Pika controller PCBA for volume production. This phase includes developing a Functional Circuit Tester (FCT) that will be integrated into the EMS production line to program and test the PCBA, ensuring the delivery of functional boards. During the industrialization phase, cable assemblies are also designed by Zign.

Let’s get technical

In the Triple Solar PVT heat pump project, we integrated various electrical interfaces, analog inputs, PWM signals and protocols such as M-Bus, Modbus and OpenTherm into a unified system. This integration required careful attention to EMC and safety regulations. Yocto was used to develop a platform based on embedded Linux which unlocks all these interfaces for the control logic using a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) written in Rust.

We also developed a custom RS485 bus system with Protobuf to meet modularity requirements and ensured cybersecurity compliance by adhering to the EN 303 645 standard.

Sustainable heating and cooling with the PVT heat pump -

Sustainable heating and cooling with the PVT heat pump -

Concept design

System design

Implementation

Industrialization

Let’s get technical

A selection of our work for brands we had the pleasure working with.