Abstract
To meet long-term climate change targets, the way that heating and cooling are generated and distributed has to be changed to achieve a supply of affordable, secure and low-carbon energy for all buildings and infrastructures. Among the possible renewable sources of energy, ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems can be an effective low-carbon solution that is compatible with district heating and cooling in urban areas. There are no location restrictions for this technology, and underground energy sources are stable for long-term use. According to a previous study, buildings in urban areas have demonstrated significant spatial heterogeneity in terms of their capacity to demand (C/D) ratio under the application of GSHP due to variations in heating demand and available space. If a spatial sharing strategy can be developed to allow the surplus geothermal capacity to be shared with neighbors, the heating and cooling demands of a greater number of buildings in an area can be satisfied, thus achieving a city with lower carbon emissions. In this study, a GSHP district system model was developed with a specific embedding sharing strategy for the application of GSHP. Two sharing strategies were proposed in this study: (i) Strategy 1 involved individual systems with borehole sharing, and (ii) Strategy 2 was a central district system. Three districts in London were selected to compare the performance of the developed models on the C/D ratio, required borehole number and carbon emissions. According to the comparison analysis, both strategies were able to enhance the GSHP application capacity and increase the savings of carbon emissions. However, the improvement levels were shown to be different. A greater number of building types and a higher variety in building types with larger differentiation in heating and cooling demands can contribute to a better district sharing performance. In addition, it was found that these two sharing strategies were applicable to different kinds of districts.
Highlights
In response to global warming, sustainable energy technologies are being promoted worldwide to reduce carbon emission
We evaluate the carbon-saving potential of the developed ground source heat pump (GSHP) district systems, and the results show that the sharing strategies can significantly reduce carbon emissions compared with individual systems, which is beneficial in the attempt to create a low-carbon city
The reason for this is that for both of the London, the sharing system can be seen to benefit both capacity to demand (C/D) ratio improvement and carbon emissions scenarios, the C/D ratios are higher than 100%, which shows the difference in supply capacity level, but savings, but the sharing potential is different under various district situations
Summary
In response to global warming, sustainable energy technologies are being promoted worldwide to reduce carbon emission. To realize significant emissions reduction with district heating, the heat in the networks must be provided from low-carbon sources [5] This is a global trend, with renewable energy usage showing an increasingly large share in the district heating system market, especially in the European. In addition to the cost consideration, Soga et al [19] simulated a case study at the city scale in London to investigate the influence of district size on the application potential of GSHP systems, which demonstrated that the use of a 50 m × 50 m area can greatly improve the potential compared with individual system planning, but the improvement rate decreased as the district sharing size increased.
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