Optimal Ground Source Heat Pump System Design
- Environ Holdings Inc., Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Univ. of Hartford, West Hartford, CT (United States)
- Univ. of Vermont, Burlington, VT (United States)
Despite the facts that GSHPs first gained popularity as early as the 1940’s and they can achieve 30 to 60 percent in energy savings and carbon emission reductions relative to conventional HVAC systems, the use of geothermal energy in the U.S. has been less than 1 percent of the total energy consumption. The key barriers preventing this technically-mature technology from reaching its full commercial potential have been its high installation cost and limited consumer knowledge and trust in GSHP systems to deliver the technology in a cost-effective manner in the market place. Led by ENVIRON, with support from University Hartford and University of Vermont, the team developed and tested a software-based a decision making tool (‘OptGSHP’) for the least-cost design of ground-source heat pump (‘GSHP’) systems. OptGSHP combines state of the art optimization algorithms with GSHP-specific HVAC and groundwater flow and heat transport simulation. The particular strength of OptGSHP is in integrating heat transport due to groundwater flow into the design, which most of the GSHP designs do not get credit for and therefore are overdesigned.
- Research Organization:
- Environ Holdings Inc., Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Geothermal Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0002801
- OSTI ID:
- 1312959
- Report Number(s):
- DOE_GSHP
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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