The effect of coupling solar thermal system and geothermal heat pump systems in areas with unbalanced heating and cooling demand

Geothermal source heat pump (GSHP) systems as renewable energy systems are being more frequently installed as part of the zero-energy building drive. However, in South Korea, where a large amount of heating load can be required, maintaining high system performance by using only a GSHP is difficult owing to the gradual degradation of its thermal performance. The performance of a solar-assisted GSHP system was therefore experimentally analyzed and compared with a GSHP-only system. The results showed that the heating coefficient of performance of the GSHP-only operation was 5.4, while that of the solar-assisted GSHP operation was 7.0. In the case of the GSHP-only system, the maximum temperature of the heat pump water supply on the heat source side was initially 13.1^◦C, but this rapidly decreased to 11.4^◦C during operation. For the solar-assisted GSHP system, the temperature of the water supply to the heat source side of the heat pump was controlled at 15–20.9^◦C, and the power consumption for system operation was reduced by about 20% compared with that for the GSHP-only system. Much higher temperatures could be supplied when solar heat is used instead of ground heat, as solar heat contributes to the performance improvement of the heat pump system.