• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.175-182
• /
• 2007

Geothermal-energy has been getting popular as a natural energy source for green buildings these days. As a result Geothermal Source Heat Pump System (GSHPs) was being recognized effective alternative systems to conventional heating and cooling systems owing to their higher energy utilization efficiency. But GSHPs has not been popularized thereby the large amount of initial cost of the system and insufficiency of studies for economic estimation. Therefore GSHPs are being developed to make up for the weak points that are the large amount of initial cost of the system and much annual electricity consumption. In this paper, economic estimation was conducted by payback period method and it shows that the pay back period of Heat Storage Type GSHPs was calculated 6.8 years compared with the absorption Chiller-Heater system and 8.2 years compared with the Ice storage-Boiler system. Heat Storage Type GSHPs also has the lower annual source energy consumption than the conventional heating and cooling systems because of using nighttime electricity.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
• /
• v.43 no.2
• /
• pp.197-205
• /
• 2010

Recently abrupt climate changes have been occurred in global and regional scales and $CO_2$ reduction technologies became an important solution for global warming. As a method of the solution shallow underground thermal energy storage (UTES) has been applied as a reliable technology in most countries developing renewable energy. The geothermal energy system using thermal source of soil, rock, and ground water in aquifer or cavern located in shallow ground is designed based on the concept of thermal energy recovery and storage. UTES technology of Korea is in early stage and consistent researches are demanded to develop environmental friendly, economical and efficient UTES systems. Aquifers in Korea are suitable for various type of ground water source heat pump system. However due to poor understanding and regulations on various UTES high efficient geothermal systems have not been developed. Therefore simple closed U-tube type geothermal heat pump systems account for more than 90% of the total geothermal system installation in Korea. To prevent becoming wide-spread of inefficient systems, UTES systems considering to the hydrogeothemal properties of the ground should be developed and installed. Also international collaboration is necessary, and continuous UTES researches can improve the efficiency of shallow geothermal systems.