scholarly journals The earth-coupled heat pump: Utilizing innovative technology in single family rehabilitation strategies

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Buildings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaheh Jalilzadehazhari ◽  
Georgios Pardalis ◽  
Amir Vadiee

The majority of the single-family houses in Sweden are affected by deteriorations in building envelopes as well as heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. These dwellings are, therefore, in need of extensive renovation, which provides an excellent opportunity to install renewable energy supply systems to reduce the total energy consumption. The high investment costs of the renewable energy supply systems were previously distinguished as the main barrier in the installation of these systems in Sweden. House-owners should, therefore, compare the profitability of the energy supply systems and select the one, which will allow them to reduce their operational costs. This study analyses the profitability of a ground source heat pump, photovoltaic solar panels and an integrated ground source heat pump with a photovoltaic system, as three energy supply systems for a single-family house in Sweden. The profitability of the supply systems was analysed by calculating the payback period (PBP) and internal rate of return (IRR) for these systems. Three different energy prices, three different interest rates, and two different lifespans were considered when calculating the IRR and PBP. In addition, the profitability of the supply systems was analysed for four Swedish climate zones. The analyses of results show that the ground source heat pump system was the most profitable energy supply system since it provided a short PBP and high IRR in all climate zones when compared with the other energy supply systems. Additionally, results show that increasing the energy price improved the profitability of the supply systems in all climate zones.


1984 ◽  
Vol 106 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-446
Author(s):  
P. D. Metz

A research program at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has studied ground coupling, i.e., the use of the earth as a heat source/sink or storage medium for solar-assisted and stand-alone heat pump systems. As part of this research program, five serpentine earth coil experiments were operated between December 1978 and September 1981. Heat was added to or removed from the earth coils according to weekly schedules based on computer simulations of solar-assisted and stand-alone, ground-coupled heat pump systems operated in the local (New York) climate. Each earth coil was operated according to a different control strategy. This paper presents experimental results from these experiments for the period December 1978 to April 1981, and compares these results to those generated by a comptuer model, GROCS, developed at BNL. The model is found to provide a reasonably good fit to the data, for the most part, using the experimental undisturbed soil thermal properties. In some cases, the use of a lower soil thermal conductivity provides a better fit, particularly during summer months when heat was added to the ground. Thus, given soil properties, GROCS can be used to predict earth coil performance. If given earth coil performance, the model can predict soil thermal properties. Serpentine earth coils are found to be suitable to provide auxiliary heat or heat rejection for solar heat pump systems. In fact, earth coil-based, stand-alone, ground-coupled heat pump systems can provide all heat needed for winter space heating and all heat rejection required for summer space cooling with no need for any auxiliary heating. Subfreezing winter operation is necessary for shallow earth coils in cold climates. No deleterious effects to the ground were observed from the long-term operation of these experiments.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 4052 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolando M. Kisse ◽  
Martin Braun ◽  
Simon Letzgus ◽  
Tanja M. Kneiske

Next to building insulation, heat pumps driven by electrical compressors (eHPs) or by gas engines (geHPs) can be used to reduce primary energy demand for heating. They come with different investment requirements, operating costs and emissions caused. In addition, they affect both the power and gas grids, which necessitates the assessment of both infrastructures regarding grid expansion planning. To calculate costs and CO2 emissions, 2000 electrical load profiles and 180 different heat demand profiles for single-family homes were simulated and heat pump models were applied. In a case study for a neighborhood energy model, the load profiles were assigned to buildings in an example town using public data on locations, building age and energetic refurbishment variants. In addition, the town’s gas distribution network and low voltage grid were modeled. Power and gas flows were simulated and costs for required grid extensions were calculated for 11% and 16% heat pump penetration. It was found that eHPs have the highest energy costs but will also have the lowest CO2 emissions by 2030 and 2050. For the investigated case, power grid investments of 11,800 euros/year are relatively low compared to gas grid connection costs of 70,400 euros/year. If eHPs and geHPs are combined, a slight reduction of overall costs is possible, but emissions would rise strongly compared to the all-electric case.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 1973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adnan Ploskić ◽  
Qian Wang ◽  
Sasan Sadrizadeh

The aim of this study was to map the parameters that have the greatest impact on the environmental impact of heating systems usually used in Nordic single-family dwellings. The study focused on mapping the technical requirements for efficient operation of heating systems in a broader context. The results suggest that the ability of a heating system to be operated with a low-temperature water supply depends to a large extent on the heating demand of a building. It was shown that an increase in the water flow rate in hydronic circuits would significantly increase the thermal efficiency from analyzed heating systems. This increase would not increase the pumping power need, nor would it create noise problems in distribution network if the distribution pipes and thermostatic valves were properly selected. However, this increase in water flow rate improved the efficiency of considered closed-loop heat pump. It was further shown that the efficiency of the heat pump could be additionally improved by halving the energy needs for the domestic hot-water and circulators. The main conclusion from this study is that exergy usage, CO2 emission and thereby environmental impact are significantly lower for heating systems that are operated with small temperature drops.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2944
Author(s):  
Luca Baldini ◽  
Benjamin Fumey

The article estimates energy flexibility provided to the electricity grid by integration of long-term thermal energy storage in buildings. To this end, a liquid sorption storage combined with a compression heat pump is studied for a single-family home. This combination acts as a double-stage heat pump comprised of a thermal and an electrical stage. It lowers the temperature lift to be overcome by the electrical heat pump and thus increases its coefficient of performance. A simplified model is used to quantify seasonal energy flexibility by means of electric load shifting evaluated with a monthly resolution. Results are presented for unlimited and limited storage capacity leading to a total seasonal electric load shift of 631.8 kWh/a and 181.7 kWh/a, respectively. This shift, referred to as virtual battery effect, provided through long-term thermal energy storage is large compared to typical electric battery capacities installed in buildings. This highlights the significance of building-integrated long-term thermal energy storage for provision of energy flexibility to the electricity grid and hence for the integration of renewables in our energy system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 251 ◽  
pp. 03018
Author(s):  
Fuad Mutasim Baba ◽  
Hua Ge

The Earth is already experiencing some of the effects of climate change, such as rising temperature, more frequent storms, increased precipitation, etc. This paper investigates the effect of climate change on the energy consumption of a single-family house with different energy efficiency levels, i.e. bylaw to meet current National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB), and passive house (PH) to meet the PH requirements under four climate zones in British Columbia, Canada. SRES A2, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios are used to generate future climate for 2020, 2050, and 2080. The simulation results show that for both bylaw and PH cases, heating energy consumption will be reduced while cooling energy consumption will be increased, as a result for bylaw case, the energy consumption will be decreased for four climate zones, while for PH case, the energy consumption will be increased for zone 4 & 5 and decreased for zone 6 & 7. In climate zone 5, the building fails to meet the PH requirements during 2050. Therefore, buildings designed based on historical weather data will perform differently under the changing future climates, thus the efforts should be made to design buildings that are adaptable to climate change.


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