Modelling ground source heat pump system by an integrated simulation programme

Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) is a technology which can be utilized to offer low carbon emissions heating/cooling and hot water supply. However, improperly designed GSHPs can increase operational costs and often do not provide the expected reduction in emissions. Under the current design approach in the industry, each of the GSHP system components is designed separately. To optimize the trade-offs between the different system components and to account for the uncertainty in thermal behaviour of ground and ground heat exchanger (GHE), we need an integrated approach that can model the system as a whole. In this paper, an integrated model of GSHP systems is developed and tested through a case study of an existing GSHP system in UK. In this integrated model, the GHE is simulated by a computational intensive finite element model, which can quantitatively predict the changes of temperature in the ground heat exchanger and surrounding soil. The close match between the modelled results and the actual data demonstrates the ability of the integrated model to simulate thermal-pile systems with a reasonable level of accuracy.