Although the advantages of ground-source heat pumps over their conventional alternatives make these systems a very attractive choice for air conditioning, not only for residential buildings but increasingly also for institutional and commercial buildings, a significant barrier to wider application of this technology is a high first cost. When used in cooling-dominated buildings, ground-source h...

The ground heat exchanger is traditionally used as a heat source or sink for the heat pump that raises the temperature of water to about 50 ◦C to heat houses. However, in winter, the heating thermostat (temperature at which heating begins) in the Australian Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) is only 20 ◦C during daytime and 15 ◦C at night. In South-East Melbourne, the temperature a...

Geothermal Heat Pumps, or Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP), are systems combining a heat pump with a ground heat exchanger (closed loop systems), or fed by ground water from a well (open loop systems). They use the earth as a heat source when operating in heating mode, with a fluid (usually water or a water-antifreeze-mixture) as the media transferring the heat from the earth to the evaporator o...

Over the last 15 years, computerized controls have become more and more common in our homes. The smart home looks at expanding the use of the computers into the difference parts of the home, creating a network that can be easily and conveniently controlled. The use of computer controls removes the need to actually flick a switch and allows elements of the home to respond automatically to the pe...

Ground-source heat pump (GSHP) systems can achieve a higher coefficient of performance than conventional airsource heat pump (ASHP) systems because the ground, which functions as the heat source or sink, is at a higher temperature in winter and lower in summer than the air temperature (Kavanaugh 1992; Kavanaugh et al 1997). In addition, there will likely be some mitigation against the effects o...

Consumer adoption of microgeneration technologies is part of the UK strategy to reduce carbon emissions from buildings. Domestic heat pumps are viewed as a potentially important carbon saving technology, given the ongoing decarbonisation of the electricity supply system. To address the lack of independent evaluation of heat pump performance, the Energy Saving Trust undertook the UK’s first larg...