The economic and environmental optimisation of integrating ground source energy systems into buildings

James Dickinson, Tim Jackson, Marcus Matthews and Andrew Cripps

Energy, 2009, vol. 34, issue 12, 2215-2222

Abstract: There are currently two main drivers for the consideration of ground source energy systems in the built environment in the UK. Firstly, building occupiers and owners are becoming increasingly concerned at rising energy prices whilst building designers are also required to reduce, due to European and national and local legislation, the operational CO2 emissions from new and existing buildings. This paper considers the application of Bivalent (dual fuel) ground source heat pump heating and cooling systems as a way to reduce the installation costs whilst also providing considerable economic and environmental savings. A case study building is used to demonstrate the importance of optimising ground loop heat exchanger length, considering differing future energy prices and the chosen appraisal period. An incremental approach is used to consider the relative benefits of increasing the size of the GSHP. Designers can also be misled by the assumption that by sizing a GSHP system to just meet the legislative targets the most economically sized system will be installed. The optimum system shows a >60% reduction in the capital cost vs. a peak sized GSHP system whilst still providing >70% of the respective economic savings and CO2 reduction.

Keywords: GSHPs; GLHE; Bivalent; Economics; Carbon dioxide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544208003228
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:34:y:2009:i:12:p:2215-2222

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2008.12.017

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().