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Solar w/heat pump

no water at all. You're right Bob, best investigate prior to injecting. Hence the reason for my shallow well. Water table here is below 100 feet.

Good point though.

ME

Comments

  • jerm
    jerm Member Posts: 7
    solar w/heat pump?

    What would happen if you were to add a heat pump to extract more heat from a solar panel? Could you use solar panels in place of a ground source, and would it be efficient? Has anybody ever tried or heard of doing this?
  • Constantin
    Constantin Member Posts: 3,796
    That could work by day...

    ... but what about the night? If it's a cold climate, that solar panel won't do much for you in the evening.

    Yes, you could overcome that by installing a big solar array and a huge thermal storage battery in the basement, but at that point it's probably easier to simply run the GSHP off the battery whenever it is warmer than the ground loop. A differential loop controller like the Goldline would then determine for you which circulator pump should run at any given time.
  • I remember...

    back in the Hay Days of solar there were a couple of companies around using refrigerant to transfer heat from a black unglazed absorber that was mounted on the roof, facing south at an angle equal to the latitude.

    Essentially, all it was is a heat pump with a flat black unglazed evaporator. Seemed kind of strange seeing frost on the absorber/evaporator during the day light hours, and I'm sure that it ran even at night.

    During the recent Solar Decathlon contest, I had proposed the use of a water to water heat pump to cool the solar storage tank down to 35 degrees F, so that as soon as the sun cracked the horizon, the evacuated tube solar collectors could start pumping heat back into the tank. The Engineering professor from the university told his students that it was too "out of the box" thinking.

    Personally, I thnk its an excellent idea, but I'm just a lost hot water heating plumber roaming the plains and hills of Colorado. What do I know...;-)

    One of the experiments I have in mind for my own live in laboratory is to drill a couple of shallow (80 to 100 feet deep) wells in my own back yard for use with a GSHP to heat my home. My solar array will have the functinal capability to dump the excess free solar heat into the holes. During the winter months, when the GSHP is running, I should have higher approach temperatures from the GSHP wells, thereby raising the COP of the heat pump, reducing the parasitic cost of operating the heat pump, and reducing my overall energy bill.

    Wait till the wife sees me drilling wells in the back yard. If you thought Ellen Rohr was upset with Hot Rod when he converted her kitchen to radiant ceiling, you ain't seen nothing yet!!

    I'll be sure to drop sensors in the well to see the residual effects of dumping all that excess free summer energy down the hole.

    ME

  • Simply Rad_2
    Simply Rad_2 Member Posts: 171
    Heat pumps

    A few years ago an entire little communuity sprung up using GSHP. The primary heat is ground source and they use gas for a huge snow melt sytem. The snow melt system includes the road and sidewalks. During the summer months these roads and sidewalks act as giant solar collectors and the heat produced is dumped back into the wells. The contractor has found that he can raise the ground temperature to 70 degrees by the time heating season comes around. A great way to boost the efficiency of snowmelt and GSHP. Jeffrey
  • Bob Eh?_2
    Bob Eh?_2 Member Posts: 42


    The thing you have to watch here is if you actually have any significant water migration through your field..... Although this generally stabilizes your loop temperatures in normal ground source loop systems because the water takes the injected heat or cold away it is futile to try and externally inject heat or cold and expect it to hang around.

    Fortunately, since I have several springs flowing through my field, I figured that out before building a closed storage pool was out of the question ;-)

    Bob

    Bob
  • Wayco Wayne_2
    Wayco Wayne_2 Member Posts: 2,479
    Interesting thread

    I was wondering about the viability of doing that with a slinky style ground source loop. I had been told years ago that by late Spring the ground was pretty cold around the pipe and if there was a late freeze you may run out of capacity. If there was a solar array it could add heat all the time. Not in the Summer though I would think. (BTW, Mark. Speaking of the Solar Decathalon, the 8th place team U of MD (go Terps) have donated their building to a Charity based farm called Red Wiggler that holds social works programs. The building will serve as a residence for the caretaker of the farm in off hours. They will dig a septic field and plan to sell electricity back to the Utility to help with maintenance costs. I visited this building down on the Mall. Lightweight bamboo floors over concrete encased Rehau tubing. PV and evac tube absorbers. It will be located a mile or 2 from ny house. Cool. WW

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  • David_5
    David_5 Member Posts: 250
    It's been done

    This type of system was built in the late 70's and early 80's. It then fell out of favor, probably for the same reasons as the rest of solar. A couple of years ago I installed a water source heatpump in a new house with solar panels. The owner put in a 4000 gallon tank under part of the house. The system works. However the house is very well insulated and only required 24000 btu on a design day. This house would be inexpensive to heat with any source. The homeowner told me the panles cost $10,000. Payback will take forever and they didn't even get a/c out of the deal.

    David
This discussion has been closed.