The Belgian pilot sites are making strong progress in the development of smarter and more efficient heating and cooling systems. The work focuses on improving borefield performance, strengthening system modelling, and testing advanced control strategies for sustainable buildings.

Valuable data from the De Schipjes pilot site

At the De Schipjes pilot site, more than one year of glass fibre measurement data is now available from two boreholes, each reaching a depth of 125 metres.

This data provides valuable insights into how the borefield behaves under different operating conditions, including regular heating operation, natural summer regeneration, and active regeneration using solar thermal collectors.

These measurements are an important step for the project, as they will support more advanced borefield modelling and help improve the performance of Model Predictive Controllers. By better understanding how the system reacts in real conditions, the project can develop smarter and more reliable control strategies for heating and cooling.

Applying insights to the Stijn Streuvelsstraat replica pilot

The knowledge gained from De Schipjes is also being applied to the replica pilot site at Stijn Streuvelsstraat.

At this site, a split borefield can switch between passive cooling and active regeneration using PVT technology. This makes it possible to explore more flexible and efficient ways of managing heating and cooling demand while supporting the long-term performance of the borefield.

Optimising design and control strategies

In parallel, the team has developed a novel Integrated Optimal Control and Sizing method. This approach uses physics-based models to optimise system design while also taking future control strategies into account.

Applied to the residential pilots, the method achieved 20% to 40% reductions in total cost of ownership compared to conventional design and rule-based control approaches.

In its first real-world application, the method also enabled a 38% reduction in the size of the ground-source heat pump at the Stijn Streuvelsstraat pilot.

A key milestone for the project

These results show the potential of combining detailed monitoring, advanced modelling and smart control strategies to improve the performance and cost-efficiency of sustainable heating and cooling systems.

Congratulations to Louis Hermans, who developed the Integrated Optimal Control and Sizing methodology and successfully defended his PhD on this topic.