Optimise Building Heating via Solar-Geothermal Energy Pile System and Digital Twins - SGPile

The current ground source heat pumps (GSHP) in building heating/cooling systems have limitations due to high borehole drilling cost and thermal imbalance caused by mismatching heating/cooling demands. These limitations can be relieved by the proposed Solar-Geothermal Energy Pile (SGPile) system which can reduce the initial installation cost and improve the thermal efficiency. Detailed experiments and numerical analyses will be conducted to investigate the thermal and structural performance of energy foundations, and to provide guidance on the new design method. Digital twins will be developed to integrate the test data with the simulation, and to optimise the thermal performance of the system without compromising the structural safety. The same framework can be applied to other geostructures (e.g. walls, tunnel linings) for heating/cooling of infrastructure (e.g. metro stations, bridges, airports, and roads), which will contribute to green energy transition in the building industry.