Publications Details

Geothermal heat pump research and development studies at Sandia national laboratories

Martinez, Gale M.

The Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP) concept was originally developed in the 1940's. Recently, because of increasing energy costs, utility interest, and the development of simple and durable ground source heat exchangers, GHP's have gained international attention as a proven means of energy conservation and electrical peak power demand reduction. GHP systems require installation of a buried heat exchanger to utilize the nearly constant ground temperature making them more efficient than conventional air source heat pumps. However, the high installation cost for both residential and commercial applications is a major obstacle to their market penetration. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) through its sponsors, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD), has embarked on a research program to find ways to reduce GHP installation costs and improve performance, thereby increasing their market penetration. The major elements of the program are: data acquisition to quantify the performance of GHP's, research and development (R&D) of the ground source heat exchanger aimed at reducing installation costs, and support of DOE efforts to market the GHP concept. This paper describes the current status of our program, some experimental and analytical results, and plans for future activities.