Abstract
Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) and Canmet Energy have initiated the joint research project in carrying out investigation and analysis of energy savings of load sharing applications featuring single detached residential and commercial buildings. Moreover, the energy savings of the system which employ ground source heat pump (GSHP), and the hybrid systems of Fuel Cell (FC) – GSHP and Photovoltaic thermal (PVT) – GSHP were also investigated and analyzed. The simple sum of residential and commercial building conventional case was considered as the reference case. The systems' performance was simulated over one full year in TRNSYS software environment under typical weather conditions for Ottawa, Canada and Incheon, Republic of Korea. Reference and advanced load sharing cases were simulated and analyzed in terms of thermal/cooling load satisfied and operational and capital energy savings. These cases were systematically summarized into seven cases, as following:
Case 1 is utilizing conventional set up – boiler and chiller to meet heating and cooling demands of a single detached house. Case 2 is utilizing the same conventional set up as Case 1 – boiler and chiller to meet heating and cooling demands of an office building that has the same layout as the house in Case 1. Case 3 is a simple summation of Case 1 and Case 2 systems and loads. Case 4 is a load sharing setup featuring common boiler and chiller used to meet the combined loads of the house and office. Case 5 is a load sharing case utilizing a ground source heat pump (GSHP) to meet the combined loads of the house and office. Case 6 is a load sharing case where a hybrid PEM fuel cell (FC)/ground source heat pump (GSHP) system is used to meet the combined loads of the house and office. Case 7 is a load sharing case where a hybrid Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT)/ground source heat pump (GSHP) system is used to meet the combined loads of the house and office.
The simulation results show that by using the same equipment with different capacities the load sharing system can achieve operational energy saving of 3–4 % in comparison to the reference system. Furthermore, Case 5, Case 6, and Case 7 were able to save energy up to 40%, 25%, and 57% in comparison to the case 3 respectively.