GEOTHERMAL POTENTIAL FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN BUILDINGS IN PALESTINE
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Date
2023-05-28
Authors
Aref Rashad Aref Abdulkarim
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An - Najah National University
Abstract
Almost 40% of energy consumption worldwide is associated with buildings. Thus, the construction sectors are essential to achieving energy and environmental targets for decarbonization by 2050. However, the majority of buildings in Palestine are built with low energy efficiency standards which results in buildings with high energy consumption. In recent years, a lot of studies and applications on energy-saving renovation of existing buildings have been carried out to properly address the above problems in various countries.
Geothermal energy, as one of the most popular renewable energy technologies, has been used and explored to build heating and/or cooling transitions and carbon neutrality put it into practical application. Geothermal energy means geothermal resources less than 200 meters deep, also is defined as surface geothermal energy. This energy is not geographically restricted, and this energy is available continuously and reliably almost everywhere in the world where its temperature ranges from 5 - 30 (C˚) . It is worth mentioning that, this renewable energy resource in Palestine has not been extensively explored with few studies on its feasibility. However, this technology is different from common energy-saving technologies (for example, photovoltaic solar panels), solar panels and wind energy can produce electricity only at day time and when there is wind, also approval and contract is required from the authorities to install it, and the area to install these systems is not always available. But, in Geothermal energy case, it’s available all year long and utilizing this renewable energy source require no contracts or approvals from authorities. Moreover, it’s available every were on earth and it require less space and less maintenance. All these advantages over other renewable system makes Geothermal energy one of the most promising renewable energies.
In this research, two types of applications of geothermal energy were studied; “Ground Heat Assisted Heat Pump Technology (GAHP) and “Earth Tube Technology (ET)” for various climatic regions in Palestine, which are hot dry summer and warm winter in Jericho city, hot and dry summer and cold winter in South-Hebron, hot-humidity summer and moderate winter in Gaza and Tul-Karim, finally moderate summer and cold winter in Jerusalem city, the capital of Palestine. It was found that energy consumption for heating and cooling can be decreased by (42% in heating to 58.8% in cooling) when implementing GAHP system, and when applying ET system this reduction ranges between 33.7% to 50.1% in heating, and 26% to 35.7% in cooling%). This proves that the use of this permanent and clean energy is feasible in Palestine, and can effectively reduce energy consumption, provide better comfort and reduce the environmental impact of buildings for heating and cooling.