Viability Of Hybrid Ground Source Heat Pump System With Solar Thermal Collectors

This thesis presents a study for examining the viability of hybrid ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems that use solar thermal collectors as the supplemental component in heating dominated buildings. Loads for an actual house in the City of Milton near Toronto were estimated. TRNSYS, a system simulation software tool, was used to model the yearly performance of conventional GSHP as well as the proposed hybrid GSHP system. The house was equipped with a data monitoring system which was installed to read and record fluid flow, temperature and electricity consumption in different components of the system. The actual yearly data collected from the site was examined against the simulation results. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to determine the relationship between the solar collector area and the ground loop heat exchanger (GHX) length. It was shown that the ratio of GHX length reduction to solar panel area of 4.7 m/m This study demonstrates that a hybrid GSHP system, combined with solar thermal collectors, is a feasible choice for space conditioning for heating dominated houses. It was shown that the solar thermal energy storage in the ground could reduce a large amount of ground loop heat exchanger length. Combining three solar thermal collectors with a total area of 6.81m