Within the present context of the effects of climate changes upon the environment, social and economic framework, but also of the trend of population growth and urban development, ensuring a sustainable, competitive and secure energy development will be possible, primarily, by reducing the negative impact of buildings upon the environment, improving energetic and ecological performances of systems and buildings envelope and promoting renewable sources of energy. In this sense, the paper analyzes, in dynamic simulation regime, performant solutions to reduce the energy consumption for heating energy efficient buildings and greenhouse gas emissions, by harnessing geothermal energy through the use of heat pumps and earth-to-air heat exchangers. The case study starts from an energy efficient building, analyzing the dynamic thermal behavior of the building and then various configurations of earth-to-air heat exchangers in terms of heating potential. For the selection of the optimum solution in terms of coverage of the heating energy demand, different systems combining heat pumps and earth-to-air heat exchangers are studied.
Distributed real-time temperature and energy control of energy efficient buildings via geothermal heat pumps
