Abstract:
Buildings consumed 40% of the energy and represented 40% of the carbon emissions in the United States. This is more than any other sector of the U.S. economy, including transportation and industry. Most building energy consumption is for space heating, cooling and water heating in buildings. Enhancing building efficiency represents one of the easiest, most immediate and most cost-effective ways to reduce carbon emissions. One of energy efficient and environment friendly technologies with potentials for savings is Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) system. On the other hand, solar energy is considered as an unlimited an environment friendly energy source, which has been widely used for solar thermal and solar power applications. This study presents a laboratory test facility for a solar powered ground source heat pump system. The ultimate technical goal is to apply the solar powered ground source heat pump into a net-zero energy building (NZEB), where all the electricity consumption will be covered by an integrated on-site solar Photovoltaics (PV) panels and battery system. In addition, an equation based object-oriented modeling language, i.e., Modelica [1] is being investigated for the integrated system modeling. Such dynamic model will be used to explore advanced control of a solar powered GSHP system to facilitate better building to grid integrations. The detail for the design and layout of this solar powered GSHP system, together with the monitoring and data acquisition system and its Modelica-based dynamic model are introduced in this thesis. In addition, the feasibility of the application of the system are discussed. Finally yet importantly, the future work are presented.
