Real Time Data on Actual Geothermal COPs – Part 2 of Lessons Learned from 100,000 Hours+ of Real Time Geothermal Monitoring Data

This is a very nervous time for the geothermal industry and I can feel it when I’m on the phone with installers. There’s a lot of geothermal companies that have been around for 20+ years and now there’s a lot of innovation happening around policy, real time monitoring, and playing around with different ground loop heat exchangers, that industry veterans haven’t had to deal with before and it’s uncomfortable for them.

Here’s my main message to the geothermal industry: if you’re asking everyone to look at new ways to heat and cool buildings, you also need to be looking at new technologies, policies, and ways of doing things yourselves. Some of you are, but on average I notice more hesitancy within the industry than excitement about embracing (inevitable) change. I could be wrong on this, just my perception.

Monitoring projects means that we’re going to find great, good, and bad systems. In fact that’s the goal. Matt is a little more soft spoken so he wouldn’t say this, but yes, we will find bad systems.

With that being said, I’m super excited to be working with Matt and publishing this data. There’s only a small group of things the geothermal industry can do to proactively (unlike waiting around for fuel prices to increase by 300%) increase the adoption of the technology; including working for better policy, better ground loop innovations, decreasing customer acquisition costs, and verification of system performance.

Geothermal technology has a low margin of error, if anything is messed up during the design, installation and (most overlooked) operation of the system, the efficiencies will be shot. Here’s some of the interesting bits of information that can easily be found monitoring more than just kWh of the system:

How much does the COP drop due to pumping losses
Equipment failures; low refrigerate, valves, and pumps.

If you want more on monitoring check out these previous resource:

Performance Based Contracts Are the Future of Geothermal
Lessons Learned about Ground Loop Sizing from 100,000+ Hours of Real Time Geothermal Monitoring 
Free Course: How to Install, Commission and Use Real Time Geothermal Monitoring

Matt and Ground Energy Support’s data is a robust but small sample size, compared to the whole industry. But it shows the possibilities of what we can figure out with a larger sample size and more data. If you’re a manufacture, distributor, installer or driller, utility, or state energy official and would like to go a monitoring and verification study. Feel free to call me, Chris Williams at 800 393 2044 ex. 33, or Matt Davis at (603) 867-9762

Future posts will include

Geo Monitoring Quality over Quantity: Why All Data is Not the Same
Characteristics of the Best Monitoring and Verification Study
How Monitoring can Eliminate, or Prevent, Angry Customers Once and For All
Expected Versus Actual Performance: Comparing LoopLink Predictions to GES Data

Enter Matt Davis from Ground Energy Support

Introduction

This article is the second in a three-part series prepared by Ground Energy Support LLC (GES) that will highlight some of the lessons learned from over 100,000 hours of real-time ground source heat pump (GSHP) monitoring data. This is written for GSHP installers of residential and light commercial systems who want to learn how to leverage real-time Performance Monitoring to build better GSHP systems, reduce their risk and callbacks, and ensure customer satisfaction.

The previous article focused on showing how data from real-time monitoring can be used to assess how the ground loop is performing relative to both the installed capacity and the measured heating load. The daily load profiles presented in that article are now available to GxTracker™ users as part of their Performance screens (login required to view Load Profile graph).

This article focuses on the overall system performance, factors that affect performance, how real-time monitoring can be used to evaluate performance of installed equipment, and identify and address issues before they become problems.

The number of sites represents a relatively small sample size and the different measurement techniques used at the sites result in different levels of accuracy.  In spite of these limitations, we are able to identify and illustrate several factors that affect system performance.   As more sites are instrumented with web-based monitoring systems that have the capability of quantifying ground loop performance, geoexchange, and electrical consumption, there will be an unprecedented ability to assess a wide range of GSHP designs over a wide range of geologic and climatic conditions.
Measuring GSHP System Performance
GSHP systems have the potential to significantly reduce the energy needs for space heating and cooling (an estimated 4 Quadrillion BTUS in the US) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, these benefits will only be realized if the systems operate efficiently. Efficient operation requires proper design, installation, and maintenance.

One common method for assessing system performance of residential systems is to review the customer’s electric bills on a regular basis. While lower electric bills are a clear indication that the systems are operating efficiently, it is often difficult to parse out other factors that contribute to the overall electrical consumption. Additional challenges to using a customer’s electric bill to assess system performance include: new construction has no baseline for comparison; retrofits will often combine the addition of a heat pump with other efficiency measures, making it difficult to attribute the savings to the GSHP; and finally, when an electric bill is higher than expected, the cause may be unrelated to the GSHP system. One of the biggest disadvantages of relying on electric bills as a measure of system performance is that the homeowner is left to identify and report GSHP performance problems. In short, the most effective way to demonstrate that a GSHP system is performing efficiently, and thus ensure customer satisfaction, is to monitor the system in real-time so as to assess key performance metrics.

Many factors contribute to the overall performance of a GSHP system. Through our monitoring activities to date, we have found the main factors to be:

Heat pump performance and ground loop temperature
Pumping energy necessary to circulate loop fluid
Heat pump cycling patterns
Auxiliary electric heat

One of the key metrics of assessing how a GSHP system is performing in heating mode is the Coefficient of Performance (COP). The COP is the ratio of useable thermal energy to the thermal equivalent of the electricity used to operate the system.

While measuring the COP is not always the primary objective, all of our real-time monitoring systems include, at a minimum, measurements of entering and leaving water temperature (EWT and LWT), heat pump status, and an estimate of fluid flow. When power measurements are not available, power consumption is modeled using the heat pump specifications, a pump penalty based on type of system and flowrate, and measured runtimes. These methods provide representative values of COP with an error of +/- 20% and are intended to show overall trends in system behavior.

In some installations, a higher level of accuracy is desired and additional measures of power consumption and, if necessary, flowrate can be included. When accurate measures of both flow and power consumption are available, the accuracy of the COP improves to approximately +/-5%.

Because the accuracy of the computed COP varies from site to site and quality assurance measures are necessary to insure the values are representative, COPs are not computed automatically as part of our performance metrics. Rather, the necessary components are available by downloading either the minute-resolution observations or integrated daily values.
Daily Average System COPs

The Daily COP values presented in Figure 1 and summarized in Table 1 illustrate some of the main factors that affect performance. Overall, there is an upward trend in performance as heat pump technology has gone from single stage to multi-stage compressors.

The system with the lowest performance (Site A) has single stage heat pumps using a standing column well. The two-stage heat pump on a standing column well (Site B) has a higher COP, but is adversely affected by the power required for fluid pumping. The COP of the two-stage system on the closed vertical loop (Site C) varies more through the year due to both the change in EWT and the use of the auxiliary electrical heat in late February. The performance of the two-stage system using two well groundwater loop (Site D) is comparable to, and slightly higher than, the other two-stage heat pump systems. The system with a variable stage heat pump (Site E) has the highest average COP. This is likely due to a combination of the variable-stage technology and its geographic location which enabled it to maintain higher EWTs throughout the winter.

These COP values are consistent with those reported by Puttagunta and others in their 2010 study of residential GSHPs. We have also found that, while the in-field performance is typically less than the AHRI rating, the systems are seen to provide a reliable technology for heating and cooling at consistently lower cost than conventional systems.
Table 1: Seasonal Average System COPs, Winter 2012-2013

Site
System Description
Average COP

A
Standing Column Well, 2 Heat Pumps, Single Stage
2.74

B
Standing Column Well, 1 Heat Pump, Two Stage
3.15

C
Closed Vertical Loop, 1 Heat Pump, Two Stage
3.27

D
Open Two Well System, 1 Heat Pump, Two Stage
3.33

E
Closed Horizontal Loop, 2 Heat Pumps, Variable Stage
4.18

Factors that affect System COP
There are several factors that affect the overall GSHP system performance. Because of the wide range in GSHP system designs and equipment available, there is not a single best approach to optimizing performance. Rather, we show how monitoring can help characterize the elements that affect specific installations. Again, the lessons learned and examples presented in this initial series of articles focuses on heating mode and uses examples from installations ranging from US Climate Zones 4 to 1.
Heat Pump Cycling
It has long been recognized that rapid cycling of heat pumps diminishes performance and increases mechanical wear on the equipment. In recent years, more efficient dual stage heat pumps have become common that enable heat pumps to operate for longer cycles, produce lower heat output, and use less electricity.

Figure 2 shows the heat pump cycle patterns for three different systems: one with two single-stage heat pumps, a two-stage heat pump, and one with a variable-stage heat pump. While the single-stage heat pumps reach their expected heat of extraction (~22MBtuH for the 3 ton and ~40MBtuH for the 5 ton), the average production of the heat pumps (while running) over this same period was 17 MBtuH and 32 MBtuH, about 20% below their steady state production. In contrast, the two-stage heat pump is able to maintain its steady state heat production in part load for cycles of approximately 30 minutes and then, when additional heat is necessary, switch into full load. With two-stage heat pumps there is much less efficiency lost from cycling on and off. The final example is a new variable stage heat pump that operates over extended periods of time, adjusting the heat output to meet demand. In general, the lower stages provide greater performance by varying heat output over multiple stages thereby increasing overall performance.
Loop Temperature
Entering water temperature is well-recognized as one of the leading factors affecting system performance and heat pump manufacturers provide performance specifications for temperature ranging from 25 to 100 ° F.

In the example shown below (Case A from last week’s article on Loop Performance), the power consumption of the heat pump circuit (which includes the flow center), and the Auxiliary electric heat are being monitored separately with a WattNode power meter. The COP is calculated for 15-minute intervals through the 2012-2013 winter. To remove the variability of performance associated with the heat pump cycling on and off, we only include 15-minute intervals for which the heat pump was running continuously. The EWT ranges from 33 to 51 °F. While there is an overall correlation between COP and EWT, there is also considerable variability at a given temperature.

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Lessons Learned from 100,000 Hours+ of Real Time Geothermal Monitoring Data – Part 1

This is a guest article by Matt Davis, co-founder of Ground Energy Support (GES). GES provides a top quality real time monitoring package for monitoring geothermal heat pumps. Matt is an expert in geothermal monitoring. Matt has over 25 years of experience in data collection, analysis, geology and modeling of groundwater systems. He is now bringing that expertise and passion to help address the number one research priority in DOE’s recently updated GSHP Roadmap, see below “Collect/Analyze Data from GHP Systems”

Matt is an extremely active member of the ASTM committee that is working to develop heat metering standards in the United States. This committee is extremely important for implementing production based incentives for renewable thermal technologies and the lack of such a standard has been holding up the implementation of New Hampshire SB 218, the first production based renewable thermal incentive in US. This standard will also have implications for Massachusetts Bill SD 1593, which will create a production based incentive for renewable thermal technologies in Massachusetts, if it passes.

Matt is without question a top US expert on monitoring ground source heat pumps and he has the data to prove it 😉
A Few Odds and Ends Really Quick

If you’d like a larger copy of the data and graphs in this article, you can download it here. 

If you want to learn more about monitoring, all of it’s applications, how to install and commission it, and MUCH more, click here to sign up for the free product training on real time geothermal heat pump monitoring.
Curious about using real time monitoring to guarantee performance? Click here to read and download Matt’s white-paper on using real time monitoring to guarantee performance. 

This Series of Articles on Geothermal Monitoring Lessons Learned is for 2 Audiences 
1. Geothermal professionals that want to remove risk and improve their designs.

Never have angry customers again, because you can set up alerts.  Remove your risk, especially drillers, by being able to objectively calculate how much energy was extracted from the ground.

In the geothermal industry, I see three main groups. We can call them, the bottom 50%, the middle 45%, and the top 5%. The bottom 50% of the industry are the notorious, yet elusive “hacks” that everyone in the geothermal industry complains about. This technology is not for them, because it would show them how bad their work is. The top 5% is what I’ll call the geothermal old guard. These are companies that have been doing geothermal for 30 years+ and have a set standard of their ways, and don’t feel that they need to verify anything. They “know” it works. The middle 45% is really the group of contractors that is new to the geothermal industry, are extremely business savy and very confident in the quality of their designs and installations. You want monitoring to verify your designs, removes risk from your businesses and sell more jobs.

2. Policy Makers in New England

The second major group is policy makers in New England (particularly Massachusetts, hey guys!) that are now looking more and more into renewable thermal technologies and want real data on how the systems are performing. On the policy front, I’ll be doing following up posts on solar thermal and hopefully advanced biomass as well.
3 Geothermal Trends We Can be Proactive About
There are only four that I’ve been watching (click here to read 4 Trends Driving the Geothermal Industry) and working on lately that are exciting me about the geothermal industry. There’s only three that was can actually do anything about. First, policy. Second, how can we shove plastic in the ground in different configurations to decrease ground loop costs. Third, real time monitoring. Fourth is rising fuel costs, which we don’t have control over.

The geothermal industry is filled with people that think everyone outside of the industry are trying to stop the adoption of ground source heat pump. So, instead of thinking about what we PROACTIVELY do to further our industry, too much time is spent talking about what other people need to do.

Monitoring is critical because it is something we can proactively do that we solve a lot of problems.

1. “Geothermal is too expensive” –> Wrong, it’s not expensive. We don’t have the right policy in policy to support adoption. We need verified data to implement policy. Mark Faulkenberry from Western Farmers Electric Co-ops data is a good start on the utility side, we need more.

2. “The public needs to be better educated” –> Wrong. We, as in industry, need to be better marketers, salespeople, and communicators and prove the value to them. This starts with verifying performance claims.

What all of this means is that adoption of real time monitoring of geothermal systems is one of the most important things we need to start doing as an industry
Enter Matt Davis from Ground Energy Support
This article is the first in a 3-part series that will highlight some of the lessons learned from over 100,000 hours of GSHP real-time monitoring data. This is written for GSHP installers of residential and light commercial systems who want to learn how to leverage real-time Performance Monitoring to build better GSHP systems, reduce their risk and callbacks, and ensure customer satisfaction.

The overall goal of this Performance Monitoring series is to engage the GSHP community in a discussion of both 1) what is possible and 2) what is useful. This first article focuses on how web-based performance monitoring data can be used to assess the performance of the ground loop relative to installed capacity. The second article will focus on using performance monitoring data to assess the overall performance (COP) of the system and how the ground loop, heat pump, and loop pump all contribute (or limit) system performance. The third and final article will discuss how performance monitoring can be used to develop and implement performance guarantee contracts. This initial series of artilcles will focus on heating applications in residential and light-commercial installations. Cooling applications that will be addressed in future articles this Fall.
Loop Temperature
There is a growing consensus (e.g. “Ground Loop Performance”) that monitoring Entering Water Temperature (EWT) is important, relatively easy, and helps to identify problems in system performance. There is less agreement as to what the minimum entering water temperature should be for a specific application or whether adhering to a uniform standard (e.g. ISO 13256) is best for all clients under all conditions. Regardless of your design preference and practice, EWT should be monitored to ensure that your systems are operating within the design limits.

As shown in Figure 1, there is a wide range of behavior in the EWT of GSHP systems in the Northeast. The variation is due primarily to differences in design and use. All loops shown in the graph below are vertical boreholes, but they range in design from open diffusion (one well for groundwater extraction and another for groundwater return), standing column wells with various levels of bleed, to closed loop systems. Geographically, they range from Connecticut to southern New Hampshire. The residential systems are dominantly used for heating and the commercial installation has a significant cooling load for most of the year.

While the minimum EWT is a good indicator of ground loop conditions, the average of the entering and leaving water temperatures [½(EWT+LWT)] is a more meaningful metric for evaluating how the ground loop is performing relative to heating and cooling load.
Building Load
Real-time monitoring data can be used to track building load under a wide range of conditions and assess system performance. Building load provides a critically important context for interpreting loop temperature data, as it enables the installer to demonstrate that their system is operating as designed and isolate factors that are outside of their control. For example, construction practices (insulation of windows and door jams, proper ductwork installation) can have a significant impact on an GSHP system. The installer is often provided the building specifications and leaves it to the building contractors to meet those specification and can’t be on site to inspect all phase of construction or renovation. If the building envelope is not on spec, problems that arise in the heating/cooling system will like fall in the lap of the installer — why isn’t the system working? Also, installers can’t control homeowner’s thermostat settings, some of which may affect the efficiency of the system. However, by monitoring the system load, installers can identify discrepancies between operating and design conditions — discrepancies that may impact system performance and customer satisfaction.

 

The total building heat load is the sum of the GeoExchange and the heat produced by the compressor. In this discussion of Performance Monitoring, we focus on the GeoExchange portion of the building load as it is readily measured and is most closely tied to Ground Loop Performance. GeoExchange [MBtu/hr] is measured by multiplying the temperature difference (EWT – LWT) by the mass flow rate and the specific heat capacity of the circulating fluid.

[…]

Performance Based Contracting is the Future of the Residential Geothermal Business. Prove Me Wrong

(Screen shot of the Ground Energy Support Geothermal Monitoring dashboard)

If you’re serious about geothermal, you need to be monitoring your projects in real time. Click here to buy a Ground Energy Support monitoring package. Note, I advise Ground Energy Support.

This guest post was written by Matt Davis. Matt is on the ASTM thermal standards committee and is an expert at geothermal monitoring. His company, Ground Energy Support has logged more than 150,000 hours in real time data.

Real time geothermal heat pump monitoring is about to the change the geothermal industry and in 5 years it will become standard practice in competitive markets like New England and the mid-Atlantic. The best 50% of firms will double their businesses and the bottom 50% of firms will stop installing geothermal because they won’t be able to compete. This is great news for the industry and I’m on a personal mission to make this happen as fast as possible. If your business is in the top 50% of geothermal firms and you design and install high quality geothermal systems, you should quickly get familiar with real time monitoring because it will allow you to increase your profit on jobs and increase your sales. Two months ago, I went to an LI Geo meeting, pitched one of the contractors on using real time monitoring with a performance based contract, and he responded, “that’s exactly what I need, I’m not going to lose a $45,000 geothermal job to a competitor for an $800 piece of equipment.” If you’re not in the top 50%, watch out 😉

It will make your business more profitable in a few ways: 1) Increased customer satisfaction. 2) Work into a service agreement so that each sale brings in recurring revenue. 3) Increase sales by a) using other projects to show a potential clients during the sales process and b) offering a performance based contract to win any and all bids from competing geothermal companies that do not feel confident enough the in quality of their design and installation to GUARANTEE its performance.

To get familiar with real time geothermal technology, how it works, the difference between monitoring, measuring and metering, download “The Current State of Geothermal Monitoring”, published by Ground Energy Support and HeatSpring. I’m an advisor to Ground Energy Support.

Here’s what the Geothermal Monitoring Whitepaper will address

The difference between geothermal monitoring, measuring, and metering
Data collection
Calculation of the geoexchange with the ground loop
Modeling with system specifications
Deciding on the best measurement method based on goals, budget and accuracy requirements
Data analysis. How to interpret the data
Most common system performance issues with the geothermal heat pump operation, design and source side issues

There are several trends that will make real time monitoring standard practice within 5 years.

Historical precedence with the solar PV industry.
Public policy is pushing towards performance based incentives.
Monitoring addresses and solves HUGE problems that our industry faces
Monitoring also addresses the top issues that homeowners have when looking to purchase geothermal and AFTER they have purchased a product. Addressing these issues will allow you to 1) increase sales by addressing client concerns and 2) increase referral business by increasing customer satisfaction.
Monitoring can be added to your existing O+M contracts
Use monitoring to structure a performance based contract.

Now, I’ll discuss each of these items in more depth.

1. Historical precedence in the solar PV industry

In the early 2000s very few solar PV projects in California had monitoring on them. Why? The technology was too expensive, and it was not required because the majority of state incentives were based on cash rebates. Forward that to today, well over 95% of residential projects in California are monitored. Why? First, the incentives are based on the performance of the system, so they must be monitored. Second, financers are guaranteeing production amounts which must be proven with monitoring. This will be happening in the geothermal industry.

2. Public policy is pushing towards performance based incentives

Even if you don’t want to install real time monitoring, you may not have a choice, as more and more states are looking at production based incentives for renewable thermal technologies.

New Hampshire is leading the country in this effort and is currently working on establishing the rules and guidelines for implementing a law in 2013 that was passed in early 2012. You can read more about the New Hampshire program here.

State by State Comparison of Geothermal Heat Pump Legislation
US States Heating up to Renewable Thermal Heating and Cooling

Maryland has passed some legislation, and Massachusetts is looking to address renewable thermal technologies as well as Vermont. For Massachusetts and Vermont, it’s currently unclear how they will incent renewable thermal technologies, however they incentivize solar pv and wind on a production level, so my guess is that they’re pushing this way with renewable thermal technologies as well.

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