We recently did some looking around at how our users are designing systems and we found that only 5% of all the zones designed in LoopLink actually use correction factors. When we eliminated the corrected zones created by LoopLink Certified users, that number drops down to 3%. Which means, either 95% of all zones designed in LoopLink are matched exactly to manufacturer rated operating conditions or 95% of zones are designed inaccurately.
From experience we can say that the answer is most likely the latter. It is very rare that we design a system with entering air temperatures, entering water temperatures, air flow rates and circulating fluid flow rates that are exactly the same as the manufacturer rated values. Which means that our equipment may be more or less efficient than modeled which of course has an impact on loop lengths and long term operating costs.
When we sat down to talk about how we could call attention to the issue, Geo-Connections President, Ryan Carda inadvertently offered up a challenge to the geothermal designers of the world when he said :
‘I bet only the people that have passed our LoopLink Certification know how to figure out corrected performance properly.’
We realized that the topic of correction factors is very well covered in the LoopLink certified training we offer through HeatSpring. So, rather than recreating all of that content for an extraordinarily long blog post, we decided to try to motivate more people to take their design ability to the next level. To that end, Geo-Connections and HeatSpring formally issue this challenge to all geothermal system designers that are not LoopLink Certified.
Prove Carda Wrong.
Calculate the corrected performance of a heat pump given specific operating conditions. If you are right, you save $400 on getting LoopLink Certified, if you are wrong, you get $200 towards LoopLink Certification.
