Combining direct ground cooling with ground-source heat pumps and district heating: Energy and economic analysis

Direct ground cooling (DGC) is a method used in cold climates to provide cooling to buildings without the use of any mechanical refrigeration. When DGC is utilized for providing cooling, ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) and district heating (DH) are the two commonly used technologies for providing heating to the buildings. This article investigates the coupling of DGC with GSHPs and DH in terms of purchased energy and lifecycle costs. An office building equipped with active chilled beams for cooling and radiators for heating is used as a reference. Six cases based on different combinations of building envelope characteristics and thus different building heating and cooling loads are considered. The results show that using DGC-DH significantly reduces the amount of purchased electricity. However, the total energy cost is lower when DGC-GSHP is used. In addition, the DGCGSHP can be more viable when the ground loads are well balanced. Investment costs, including borehole installation and equipment costs, are lower for the DGC-DH in the majority of the investigated cases. The lifecycle cost is lower for the DGC-DH in most of the investigated cases due to lower equipment costs.