AT-15-C040 — Case Study of a Distributed GSHP System in a High School

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One of the barriers preventing rapid deployment of ground source heat pump (GSHP) technology in the United States is the lack of public awareness of and trust in this technology. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), 26 GSHP projects have been competitively selected and carried out to demonstrate the benefits of GSHP systems and innovative technologies for cost reduction and/or performance improvement. Some of the ARRA funded GSHP demonstration projects have collected at least a full-year’s worth of performance data. Case studies based on these collected data were initiated to access the energy savings and other benefits achieved by the demonstrated GSHP systems and the cost effectiveness of the investment on the GSHP installations. This paper highlights findings of a case study of one of the ARRA GSHP demonstration projects, which is a typical distributed GSHP system installed in a high school at Cedarville, AR. Since the distributed GSHP system provides simultaneous heating and cooling to individual zones in a building, the performance of each individual GSHP unit needs to be monitored and analyzed in order to determine the total heating and cooling outputs of the distributed GSHP system. Challenges and suggested solutions for collecting data and analyzing individual heat pump performance are addressed in this paper. In addition to analysis of utility bills, computer simulations of typical baseline HVAC systems were also performed to determine the energy savings achieved by the GSHP system. The computer model used in the simulations was calibrated with the measured data. Further analysis of the measured data also identified some issues in the design and operation/control of the GSHP system which had resulted in less than optimal system energy efficiency, and explores solutions to optimize its performance. These findings will help improve the design and operation of future GSHP systems.

Product Details

Published:

2015

Number of Pages:

8

Units of Measure:

Dual

File Size:

1 file , 1.5 MB

Product Code(s):

D-AT-15-C040

Note:

This product is unavailable in Russia, Belarus