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An integrated model for designing a solar community heating system with borehole thermal storage
Borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) is found to be a favorable method for storing a large amount of thermal energy, and suitable for seasonal solar thermal storage, especially for large communities. Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC), built in 2006, is the first such solar community in Canada....
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Published in: | Energy for sustainable development 2017-02, Vol.36, p.6-15 |
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Main Authors: | , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | Borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) is found to be a favorable method for storing a large amount of thermal energy, and suitable for seasonal solar thermal storage, especially for large communities. Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC), built in 2006, is the first such solar community in Canada. DLSC has achieved a 97% solar fraction after five years of operation. Although the DLSC project has been a success technically, the cost of the system is not attractive. In this study, an alternative design approach for a similar community is presented. The primary goal is to develop a system that not only achieves similar or better performance but also costs less. TRNSYS 17, along with a novel custom BTES component, is used for the system design and simulation. With the alternative design, the annual community thermal load of 2350 GJ is mostly met by solar thermal collectors via BTES and after five years of operation a 96%solar fraction is predicted. The simulation results are compared with published results for DLSC. It is estimated that the proposed system offers a 19% saving in initial cost in addition to reductions of BTES area of 38% and solar panel area of 25%.
•An integrated model for heating a solar community, using TRNSYS 17 with a newly developed component Type is presented.•The proposed borehole thermal energy storage system shows relatively less heat losses compared to an existing system.•Optimum use of the solar radiation by improving the short term storage tank design.•The new system requires approximately 19% less capital cost to build, compared to the similar built system.•Reduced footprint and real estate requirement for the borehole energy storage as a result of the newly introduced model. |
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ISSN: | 0973-0826 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.esd.2016.10.003 |