Technical, economical, and environmental scenario based modeling of the building equipped with ground source heat pump (GSHP) and solar system

Abstract

Owing to fossil fuel price fluctuation as well as its environmental adverse impact, quick running renewable energy system is inevitable. The building sector is one of the most energy-intensive sectors that play an important role in energy consumption and pollutants emission. This study aims to present an alternative plan to reduce fossil energy consumption in residential buildings. Considering the high potential of renewable energy sources, especially ground source heat pumps (GSHP) combined with solar energy near to residential sector can lead to a shift to zero energy building. Here, an attempt is made to provide the building energy requirement including the domestic hot water, heating, cooling, as well as electricity generation for sale to the national network, by presenting and comparing three scenarios assessment; the first scenario is the reference building, the second one equipped building with the GSHP system, and the third scenario includes the combination of GSHP and building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) along with the solar collector. The dynamic simulation is performed using TRNSYS software. By comparing the proposed scenarios, the results confirmed that a decrease in energy consumption is observed in the second and third scenarios by 2 and 26 percent, respectively compared to the First scenario. Economically assessment revealed that the initial net present value (NPV) in the third scenario is 18.8% and 14.1% higher than the NPV of the first and second scenarios, respectively. The return on investment (ROI) calculation shows that the investment return after 7 years for the second scenario, while this is 8 years for the first and the third scenarios. Moreover, from the environmental point of view, the second and third scenarios have led to a reduction of 11% and 41% in carbon dioxide emissions, respectively.