Abstract
This chapter presents the economic analysis of solar and heat pump (SHP) systems in terms of total costs of ownership (investment +running) over a 20-year period. The latter have been adopted to permit a direct comparison with other heating systems (i.e., fossil-fueled systems or district heating systems) and to provide a spendable figure that final users or customers can easily understand. The outcomes of this chapter testify how SHP systems present clear advantages on environmental and technical levels compared with other systems available on the market: SHP systems are competitive with respect to gas boiler installations, in particular for those applications with a great energy demand such as refurbished or existing buildings or large conditioned areas. Besides clear advantages on environmental and technical basis, investment costs are a bottleneck for achieving a widespread diffusion of SHP systems on the market. In order to promote a larger diffusion, manufacturers should work on lowering market prices, in the medium to long period. At the same time, European and national incentives should support the diffusion of SHP systems. Electricity tariffs play an additional role in this scenario. An increase of the electricity tariff would make SHP systems as cost effective as air source heat pumps even for systems with a high investment cost. The increase of the gas price would have a greater impact, in particular for systems with medium to low investment cost.