Sunday, January 24, 2016: 8:00 AM-9:00 AM
The Great Debate
Chair:
Mike Filler, P.E., Trane Company
Technical Committee: 06.08 Geothermal Heat Pumps and Energy Recovery Applications
Closed-loop geothermal heat pump (GHP) systems offer a variety of possibilities that can be optimized to the needs of the building type and owner’s resources. This session offers recommendations for identifying characteristics and design approaches important to good matches of buildings and ground loops. The advantages and disadvantages of centralized GHP systems utilizing chiller(s) are examined and compared to distributed geothermal-source water-to-air heat pump systems.
1 Happy GHP Marriages: Building Types and GHP Loop Options
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Steve Kavanaugh, Ph.D., University of Alabama |
Closed-loop geothermal heat pump (GHP) systems offer a variety of possibilities that can be optimized to the needs of the building type and owner’s resources. Distributed systems in which several ground loops serve a single building are often a good option for large footprint buildings and owners with minimal maintenance resources, such as K-12 schools. Topics for this session will include building layout, cost of headers and vertical bores, total HVAC component efficiency and demand, load diversity, flow control options, experience and quantity of maintenance personnel, and results from long term field measurements.
2 When Should Centralized GHP Systems Be Considered?
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Stephen Hamstra, P.E., Greensleeves LLC |
The design process should take into consideration several parameters when determining which is a better fit; Centralized or Distributed GHP Systems. Centralized GHP can provide advantages such as; higher efficiency for simultaneous heating/cooling which is quite common in commercial building; ease of maintenance due to reduced number of moving parts in a central location; greater potential for reduced ground loop size; easier integration with other technology such as thermal energy storage and finally, providing a more “future proof” solution.