In the last three decades of geothermal heat pump (GHP) industry, there has been an urge to present data, especially performance and itemized installation cost, as a plan to reduce the lack of knowledge and trust towards GHP systems for heating and cooling. The potential of GHPs in hot and humid climates is significant [Tao and Zhu, 2012]. However, past research efforts have demonstrated this potential through the use of simulation rather than real-time data. Therefore, the scope of work for this research is to investigate GHP system applications for residential buildings in areas with hot and humid climates. Based on the scope of work, the objective for this research is to determine the cost, energy performance, and the payback period of GHP systems using real data collected from residences in southern Louisiana. To achieve this objective, the research answered the following questions: RQ1: How do geothermal heat pump systems perform in terms of energy usage and costs in hot and humid climates when compared to traditional HVAC systems? RQ2: What is the payback period for installing a GHP system in hot and humid climates for a residential dwelling?
A case study protocol was developed to collect building information, HVAC installation cost, financial incentive, energy usage, and end-user satisfaction data from residential buildings in Louisiana, three with GHP systems and two with conventional air-source systems. The electricity consumption and usage cost between the samples was compared using ANOVA in SPSS. This study concludes that tax credits can make GHP systems more affordable to average-size households as the payback period can be four times longer without the tax credits, and although the contractor base for GHPs in southern Louisiana is in its infancy, homeowners feel more satisfied with the performance of a GHP system than with the performance of a conventional air-source system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-07102017-142635 |
| Date | 25 July 2017 |
| Creators | Duran Tapia, Claudia de Lourdes |
| Contributors | Harper, Christofer, Zhu, Yimin, Wang, Chao |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07102017-142635/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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