Turku wins the Heat Pump City of the Year award – Oilon’s heat pump solu­tion in a big role 

Oilon delivered a heat pump to a pos­it­ive clean energy dis­trict for cap­tur­ing waste energy and pro­du­cing both heating and cooling.

The European Heat Pump Asso­ci­ation (EHPA) recog­nized energy company Turku Energia with the Heat Pump City of the Year award for the company’s energy-​efficient res­id­en­tial area solu­tion. Turku, the third largest city in Finland, is one of the two Light­house Cities of the EU-​funded RESPONSE project, Dijon being the other. These cities are involved in pilot­ing and devel­op­ing energy-​positive res­id­en­tial build­ings and areas. 

In the Turku Ylioppilaskylä pilot area, the goal was to create a solu­tion that would allow the area to produce more energy than it con­sumes at an annual basis.

“When neces­sary, the area can take either cooling or heating energy from the dis­trict energy net­works but it also sup­plies surplus energy to the net­works,” says Martti Kukkola, Oilon’s chief busi­ness officer for indus­trial heat pumps and chillers.

One of the key loc­a­tions in the area is Tyyssija, a student res­id­ence with around 190 apart­ments and its own solar panels. Oilon’s con­tri­bu­tion com­prised an Oilon Chill­Heat P 300 heat pump  with a 400-kW heating and nearly 300-kW cooling capa­city.  “Even alone, the heat pump delivered to the site could provide heating for around 40 single-​family homes,” Kukkola says. 

Heating and cooling based on current need 

What makes the heat pump used at Tyyssija special is that it has as two-way con­nec­tion to the city’s dis­trict heating and dis­trict cooling network.

The heat pump itself pro­duces heating, cooling, or both depend­ing on current need. This flex­ib­il­ity allows the heat pump to meet of the build­ing’s heating and cooling needs with a good coef­fi­cient of per­form­ance all year round.

“At its best, the unit’s sea­sonal coef­fi­cient of per­form­ance has been 7, which means that for one unit of elec­tri­city used, the heat pump pro­duces seven units of energy,” Kukkola says.  This is not the first time Oilon’s heat pumps receive recog­ni­tion from EHPA. In 2022, the company’s joint project with Helen – Pos­tipuisto, an apart­ment build­ing in Hel­sinki – won the Heat Pump of the Year award in the Decar­Build­ing cat­egory. 

Key item on Turku’s carbon neut­ral­ity roadmap

Turku aims to become carbon neutral by 2029. Turku Energia’s Group Product Manager Lotta Lyytikäinen believes that heat pumps play a central role in achiev­ing this goal.

“With heat pumps, you can utilize dif­fer­ent energy sources and reuse energy in the form you actu­ally need. Heat pumps are out­stand­ing in util­iz­ing waste energy, for example,” Lyytikäinen says.

The RESPONSE project is part of the Horizon 2020 ini­ti­at­ive. In addi­tion to Turku Energia, there are 5 project part­ners: the City of Turku, Turku Student Village Found­a­tion, Högfors GST, VTT Tech­nical Research Centre of Finland, and Oilon.  “It is won­der­ful that a joint project like this can receive such an award. It is a test­a­ment to suc­cess­ful and effect­ive co-​operation.”