Is there a way to Model a Vertical Helical shallow GSHP (Please Refer Fig.)for a residential building in EnergyPlus ? I have already tried Ground Heat Exchanger: Vertical Properties by utilizing G-function values from my analysis
I am trying to model a Vertical Helical shallow GSHP which utilizes helical vertical tube heat exchanger in Ground instead of a U-tube ground heat exchanger.
Until now, I have utilized the Foundation:Kiva to get ground temperatures (instead of undisturbed ground temperatures) and also modeled "Coil:Cooling: WaterToAirHeatPump: EquationFit", "Coil:Heating: WaterToAirHeatPump: EquationFit" and "AirLoopHVAC:UnitaryHeatPump: WaterToAir" with the GroundHeatExchanger: System. This system gives me a result but my intention of research is different
My main confusion is that GroundHeatExchanger: System models a vertical U-tube heat exchanger with a distance between two pipes and there is no other object which will help me define helical vertical tube. I want to model a helical vertical GSHP ( Configuration similar to figure and not slinky GSHP), can EnergyPlus model that ? I have read the Input/output references as well as the engineering references but could not find anything that can help
C:\fakepath\Vertical Helical GSHP.PNG
Any help or input will be appreciated.
Thanks, Archan.
@Archan Shah I was working on this exact problem. The answer is no. EnergyPlus does not have a way to model a vertical helical ground heat exchanger. I found a workaround using cosimulation though, but the entire ground model and ground heat exchanger had to be modeled in matlab. See this post.
Please let me know if this answers your question and I'll post the comment as an answer.
@mldichter - Sorry for my late reply. I really wanted to try from my end as well after reading your post to find out a solution but it turns out that it is not possible to model except using another external source. Thank you so much for your help! The other post did help me a lot in trying different ways to analyze the model.