Techno-Economic Analysis of Ground-Source and Dual-Source Heat Pumps for Canadian Climates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) are a cornerstone technology for decarbonizing building heating and cooling. However, two key challenges limit their broader adoption: uncertainty in long-term performance under evolving subsurface temperature conditions and high initial capital costs driven by extensive borehole drilling requirements. This mixed-format thesis comprises two complementary studies, each targeting one of these challenges. The first study develops a semi-analytical dynamic GSHP model that integrates three core components: a detailed vapor-compression cycle resolving heating/cooling capacity and coefficient of performance (COP) variations with heat pump entering liquid temperature (ELT) from the ground. Validation is carried out against heat pump manufacturer data, published numerical simulation results, and OpenModelica simulations. Using this framework, the influence of both internally and externally induced ground temperature variations on ground-source heat pump heating and cooling capacities, and its COP over multi-year operation is quantified. A case study for a heating-dominated building load reveal that while cooling capacity changes only ~0.5% per one temperature degree (°C) increase in ground temperature, heating capacity declines by ~3% per one temperature degree (°C) decrease. To understand the significance of such capacity declines in the ground-source heat pump as a result of ground temperature variations, it is shown that a ground temperature reduction of 2 °C or more results in unmet peak heating loads requiring auxiliary systems. Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis combined with partial Spearman rank correlation sensitivity analysis identifies soil and grout conductivities as dominant parameters, while ground heat exchanger (GHE) running fluid properties exert weaker effects. These findings demonstrate the necessity of incorporating realistic subsurface dynamics for reliable long-term GSHP design and operation. The second study investigates dual-source heat pumps (DSHPs), which switch between air and ground operation based on outdoor temperature setpoints, as a strategy for reducing borehole length and GSHP capital and life-cycle costs in cold climates. A dynamic DSHP model is developed in OpenModelica. This configuration accurately resolves short-term borehole transients during frequent switching between air and ground sources. Techno-economic analyses of DSHPs are performed for Edmonton, Toronto, and Montréal, considering both small-scale and large-scale systems. Results show that DSHPs can reduce borehole design length by up to approximately 40% and lower capital cost by approximately 24%, while still achieving positive net present value (NPV) life-cycle cost savings up to approximately 15% despite reduced COP in air-source mode of the heat pump operation. A Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis confirms the robustness of the economic advantage, with partial Spearman sensitivity analysis revealing borehole cost, heat pump cost, and interest rate as the dominant financial drivers, with inflation having the least impact. Together, these studies provide a validated, computationally efficient medium- to long-term dynamic GSHP modeling framework that captures capacity and COP sensitivities to subsurface temperature drift, as well as a techno-economic assessment of DSHP systems demonstrating that strategic air–ground switching can significantly reduce borehole length and life-cycle costs of GSHP systems in cold climates. This thesis advances GSHP/DSHP performance prediction via a techno-economic assessment in Canadian cold climates, and establishes a generalizable foundation for accelerating GSHP deployment.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".