Novel tool and guidelines for ground source heat pumps in densely populated areas: a Swedish project
Abstract
With one system installed for every twenty inhabitants, Sweden is by far the country with the highest penetration of Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs). Unsurprisingly, it has initiated a project to support designers and decision makers working with GSHPs in densely populated areas. The project includes the development of a software implementing state-of-the-art ground heat transfer models, the study of possible scientific-based guidelines for the release of drilling permits, and the analysis of ground temperature data from densely populated areas. We believe that Sweden being a forerunner in this field, the lessons learned during this project will be useful for other countries. Therefore, in this article, we discuss the progress of our project: we present the developed software and examples of its applications; summarize the discussion on the possible guidelines; and describe the process to retrieve data about densely populated areas.