Heat pump systems with direct expansion ground coils

This paper is a summary of an International research project organized within the framework of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Implementing Agreement on Heat Pumps. This cooperative project, based on a task sharing principle, was proposed by the Canadian team and joined by the national teams of the United States of America, Japan and Austria. The Institute for Research in Construction (IRC) of the National Research Council of Canada (NRCC), has been acting as the Operating Agent for this project, known as Annex XV. The need for this research work is based on the recognition of the state-of-the-art of Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) technology, which can simply be described by the following two statements: (1) GSHP technology is the most successful among all renewable technologies in North American and northern European countries; and (2) installation cost of GSHP systems is currently too high for a meaningful worldwide penetration into the heating/cooling market.