Shallow geothermal systems can play a central role in boosting the heat transition and decarbonizing the heating sector. However, the expansion of geothermal systems is stagnating due to an acute shortage of artisans and drilling companies, high investment costs, and a complex planning and approval process. On the one hand, there is a need for practical planning tools that make the complex planning process accessible to decision makers, demonstrate the advantages of geothermal systems and facilitate planning. On the other hand, professional planners should be enabled to perform detailed system design that reflects the interactions between the building, the heat pump and the subsurface.
In this paper, the web-based system configurator GeoWPSys+Web is presented, which allows the dimensioning of heat pumps, buffer and DHW storage tanks in combination with geothermal source systems on the basis of manufacturer components. To support the heat generator selection process, different system variants are compared based on energetic, economic and ecological evaluation parameters. With the help of a structured web interface, complex interrelationships are presented and the user is guided systematically through the dimensioning process. Within the configurator, numerous aids are provided by calculations running in the background and the specification of default values for a maximum number of planning parameters. In addition, various calculation tools as well as coupled heat pump and subsurface simulations can be automatically triggered from GeoWPSys+Web in order to check the configuration results and to represent the mutual dynamic interactions between heat source and heat pump system.
Following the presentation of GeoWPSys+Web, dependencies in the planning of geothermal heat pump systems and parameter influences on the results are shown by means of sensitivity analyses and the variation of economic and ecological parameters.
