Investigation of Combined Heating and Cooling Systems with Short- and Long-Term Storages

Modern buildings in cold climates, like Norway, may have simultaneous heating and cooling demands. For these buildings, integrated heating and cooling systems with heat pumps, as well as short-term and long-term thermal storage, are promising solutions. Furthermore, combining this integrated system with renewables aids in the transition to future sustainable building energy systems. However, cost-effectively designing and operating such a complicated system is challenging and rarely addressed. Therefore, this research proposed an integrated heating and cooling system that incorporated a short-term water tank and a long-term borehole thermal storage. Meanwhile, three operating modes: heating, cooling, and free cooling were defined based on different heating and cooling load conditions. A detailed system model was developed in MATLAB using heat pump manufacture data as well as simulated and measured building loads. Following that, sensitivity studies were performed to investigate the impacts of ground properties, thermal storage size, setpoint temperature, heat pump characteristics, and load conditions. The findings identified the crucial factors that influence the system’s overall energy efficiency and the functioning of the key system components. Particularly, it revealed that low cooling to heating ratios caused an imbalance in charging and discharging, further reducing the ground temperature and degrading the heat pump’s performance.