Assessing the Goldilocks Zone for Open Loop Ground Source Heat Pump Systems
This is the first webinar in our 2024 Geothermal Webinar Series.
Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) systems continue to proliferate geographically, in capacity, application and in public and industry awareness. Most with a passing interest are fairly comfortable with the concept of a sort of fridge coupled to the ground via a long length of pipe installed into the ground, typically horizontally or vertically.
But when a site has a particular set of characteristics that are all favourable, it may be that the optimal GSHP system is an Open Loop GSHP. Open Loop systems require us to take water from the environment for our heat pump to exchange thermal energy with, which then must be disposed of in an environmentally acceptable manner and all the while, operating a sustainable system.
This raises a few questions, such as:
1. What are the necessary site characteristics?
2. How do we define and design an optimal system?
3. How do we define and design a sustainable system?
All the answers to all these questions are: It depends.
Open Loop GSHP systems interact with the environment in a more complex compared with Closed Loop systems. This means we need a robust assessment tool to model their operation on a site by site basis.
This presentation will attempt to introduce you to some basic Open Loop GSHP system types and suggest, from our experience and with case studies, some of the when, what, how and why of Open Loop selection, design, optimisation, environmental impact assessment and operation.
Webinar Speaker:
- Huw Williams, Director and Hydrogeologist, Agua Enodo
