Pioneering Heat Pump Project
- Indiana Inst. of Technology, Inc., Fort Wayne, IN (United States)
This project was initiated at a time when ground coupled heat pump systems in this region were limited in size and quantity. There were economic pressures with costs for natural gas and electric utilities that had many organizations considering ground coupled heat pumps; The research has added to the understanding of how ground temperatures fluctuate seasonally and how this affects the performance and operation of the heat pumps. This was done by using a series of temperature sensors buried within the middle of one of the vertical bore fields with sensors located at various depths below grade. Trending of the data showed that there is a lag in ground temperature with respect to air temperatures in the shoulder months, however as full cooling and heating season arrives, the heat rejection and heat extraction from the ground has a significant effect on the ground temps; Additionally it is better understood that while a large community geothermal bore field serving multiple buildings does provide a convenient central plant to use, it introduces complexity of not being able to easily model and predict how each building will contribute to the loads in real time. Additional controllers and programming were added to provide more insight into this real time load profile and allow for intelligent shedding of load via a dry cooler during cool nights in lieu of rejecting to the ground loop. This serves as a means to ‘condition’ the ground loop and mitigate thermal creep of the field, as is typically observed; and It has been observed when compared to traditional heating and cooling equipment, there is still a cost premium to use ground source heat pumps that is driven mostly by the cost for vertical bore holes. Horizontal loop systems are less costly to install, but do not perform as well in this climate zone for heating mode
- Research Organization:
- Indiana Inst. of Technology, Inc., Fort Wayne, IN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Geothermal Technologies Office; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0003003
- OSTI ID:
- 1319766
- Report Number(s):
- EE0003003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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