Abstract
The integrated use of multiple renewable energy sources to increase the efficiency of heat pump systems, such as in Solar Assisted Geothermal Heat Pumps (SAGHP), may lead to significant benefits in terms of increased efficiency and overall system performance especially in extreme climate contexts, but requires careful integrated optimization of the different system components. In particular, thermal storages take a fundamental role in optimizing the integration of renewable energy sources and the system operation. This work investigates the potential design optimization of a SAGHP system in a mountain site by exploring many different alternatives to optimize the mutual relationship between the solar field, the geothermal field and the water thermal storages. This is done through an original simulation-based multi-objective optimization framework considering energy efficiency and economic feasibility, which allows appraising the impact of the different design alternatives on the overall system performance and on the dynamics of the different system components. Results identify a set of optimized system configurations that optimize the integrated exploitation of the different thermal sources showing a potential increase of the overall system performance leading to 34% lower global cost compared to the initial design. High robustness of the optimal design solutions is reported with respect to the current context of high economic uncertainty.
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Abbreviations
- C a,i(j):
-
annual cost for component j at the year i
- CG(τ, P):
-
global cost as a function of calculation period and set of parameters [€]
- CI:
-
initial investment cost [€]
- E el,aux :
-
electrical energy expense of auxiliary systems [kWh]
- E el,HP :
-
electrical energy expense of heat pump [kWh]
- E el,tot :
-
total electrical energy expense [kWh]
- P :
-
set of optimization parameters
- Q DHW :
-
useful energy for domestic hot water [kWh]
- Q h :
-
useful energy for space heating [kWh]
- Q v :
-
useful energy for ventilation air heating [kWh]
- R d(i):
-
discount rate for year i [%]
- R R :
-
real interest rate [%]
- V f,τ :
-
final value of component j at the end of calculation period [€]
- w i :
-
weight of objective i in the multi-objective optimization function
- τ :
-
calculation period [years]
- AHU:
-
air handling unit
- DHW:
-
domestic hot water
- EU:
-
European Union
- GC:
-
global cost
- GHP:
-
geothermal heat pump
- HP:
-
heat pump
- INI:
-
initial design configuration
- MOB:
-
multi-objective optimization
- PSO:
-
particle swarm optimization
- SAGHP:
-
solar assisted ground-source heat pump
- SPF:
-
seasonal performance factor
- TRNSYS:
-
transient system simulation program
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Funding
Funding note: Open access funding provided by Politecnico di Torino within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. Funding to Maria Ferrara’s activity was provided by Italian MUR within the PON “Ricerca e Innovazione” 2014–2020, Asse IV “Istruzione e ricerca per il recupero” – Azione IV.4 – “Dottorati e contratti di ricerca su tematiche dell’innovazione” e Azione IV.6 – “Contratti di ricerca su tematiche Green”.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design, in the framework of IEA ESTCP Annex/Task 37 activities. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Maria Ferrara. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Maria Ferrara and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Ferrara, M., Fabrizio, E. Optimized design and integration of energy storage in Solar-Assisted Ground-Source Heat Pump systems. Build. Simul. 16, 1933–1948 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1030-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1030-4