The present paper, as the first part of two, suggests a method to approach the challenge of capacity control in Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP). The paper describes the development of a model of the system which includes several sub-models such as the heat pump unit, building, ground source, thermal storage tank, auxiliary heater, and climate. The developed computer model can be used for comparative analysis of different control methods and strategies aiming at the improvement of the system seasonal performance. With this model, on/off controlled and variable capacity GSHPs, with a single speed or variable speed pumps in the systems, can be evaluated in a wide range of operating conditions and more energy efficient methods of the system control can be found. The computer model is developed in the two environments EES and TRNSYS utilizing so-called co-solving technique.

In the present paper, as the second part of two, modeling and simulation was carried out for a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) system in the presence of all the most important interacting sub-systems such as building, ground heat source, electrical auxiliary heater, and the heat pump unit in order to make a fair and comprehensive comparison between the annual performance of on/off controlled and variable capacity systems. The annual modeling showed that dimensioning of the on/off controlled GSHP based on the peak heat demand of the building plays a significant role when the two control strategies are compared: if the on/off controlled GSHP is dimensioned to cover only 55% of the peak heat demand of the building, the electrical auxiliary, which then covers about 10% of the annual heating demand of the building, makes the SPF of the on/off controlled GSHP to be lower than the one of the variable speed system. On the contrary, when the on/off controlled system is dimensioned to cover more than 65% of the building's peak heat demand, i.e. more than 95% of the annual heat demand of the building, there is no considerable difference between the SPFs of the on/off controlled and variable capacity systems.

In the present paper, modelling and simulation was carried out for a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) system in the presence of all the most important interacting sub-systems such as building, ground heat source, electrical auxiliary heater, and the heat pump unit in order to make a fair and comprehensive comparison between the annual performance of on/off controlled and variable capacity systems. The annual modelling showed that dimensioning of the on/off controlled GSHP based on the peak heat demand of the building plays a significant role when two control strategies are compared: if the on/off controlled GSHP is dimensioned to cover only 57% of the peak heat demand of the building, the electrical auxiliary, which covers about 10% of the annual heating demand of the building, makes the SPF of the on/off controlled GSHP be lower than the one of the variable speed system. On the contrary, when the on/off controlled system is dimensioned to cover about 70% of the building’s peak heat demand, i.e. about 98% of the annual heat demand of the building, the SPF of the on/off controlled system can higher than the variable capacity systems.

In the present paper, three common methods in order to control an on/off controlled Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) system called "Constant hysteresis", "Floating hysteresis", and "Degree-Minute" methods are comprehensively described. Then, the generic model already developed by the authors is used in order to do the dynamic simulation of the systems with three different control methods over a year and making the comparison between them. The results from annual modeling of the systems show that the mean temperature of the heating water supplied to the building for the system controlled with degree-minute method is always close to the required temperature, regardless of the climatic boundary conditions over a typical year, whereas, the average supply temperature for the system with constant hysteresis method is mostly higher or lower than the required temperature, depending on the boundary condition. Regarding the annual energy use, the degree-minute and constant hysteresis methods have the lowest and highest annual energy use respectively. Switching from constant hysteresis to floating hysteresis method, the annual energy use will become lower and the mean temperature of the heating water supplied to the building will be closer to the required one.

The mass flow rate of the secondary refrigerant flowing in the borehole heat exchanger of a ground source heat pump is an influential system parameter whose variation can influence the pumping power, efficiency of the pump, heat distribution in the borehole, heat pump heat capacity, and above all, the system Overall Coefficient Of Performance (COP). The present paper uses both in-situ field measurements and modeling to evaluate these effects. From the field measurements, it can be concluded that the thermal contact between U-pipe channels increases as the brine mass flow rate decreases. Furthermore, the modeling results show that there is a certain optimum brine mass flow rate which gives a maximum overall system COP. Different optimum mass flow rates are obtained for different compressor speed and it is shown that their relation is almost linear. However, concerning system COP maximization, it can be concluded that a constant but carefully-selected brine mass flow rate can still be an appropriate option for the variable capacity heat pump unit studied in the present paper where the compressor frequency changes between 30Hz and 75Hz. Concerning the heat capacity maximization in the system, a variable speed brine pump can be used to help the insufficiently-sized compressor to cover the peak heat demand of the building.

The energy performance of buildings in cold climates, with a considerable annual heating demand, is dependent on the ventilation air change rates (ACH). Buildings utilized for commercial use often have high annual ventilation heating demand due to high ACH required from indoor air quality aspect. In order for these buildings to have a reasonable energy performance a heat recovery system is often used to recover heat from the exhaust air to the makeup air. There are different variations of these systems; one that is sometimes used in Sweden is a run around coil heat recovery system. The present paper summarizes the findings from previous studies [5-7], and presents a comparative study, for three different cases; the traditional run-around coil heat recovery system; with a three stage on/off controlled heat pump retrofitted into the system; and with a variable capacity heat pump retrofitted into the system. Annual modeling (using TRNSYS) shows that by retrofitting a well-designed 3 stage heat pump to the system the annual heat recovery rate for the Stockholm case can be increased from 47% to 65%. For a retrofitted variable speed capacity heat pump for the Stockholm case the annual heat recovery improves from 47% to 66%. The modeling also shows that a well designed variable speed heat pump can cover 81% of the total ventilation heating demand and a well designed multi stage heat pump 77% of the total ventilation heating demand.