Abstract

In 2016, space heating (SH) and domestic hot water (DHW) heating for Canadian res-
idential buildings accounted for 11% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emis-
sions. To drastically decrease the GHG emissions from the residential sector, solar
thermal energy can be used to fulfill the SH and DHW needs of residential buildings.
A major challenge for solar energy use in Canada is the timing mismatch between
the solar radiation received and the space heating needs of homes. A seasonal thermal
energy store bridges this gap by storing thermal energy and discharging it when the
thermal demand arises. Sand can be used as the medium in thermal energy storage,
but no research has yet been published demonstrating the feasibility or efficiency of
a sand-based seasonal thermal energy store (SSTES) for a residential building. A
full-scale research house with a solar combisystem and an SSTES has been built in
Ottawa, Canada, to evaluate this novel technology.
This dissertation documents and analyzes a year-long experiment that has been
performed at the research house to assess whether the solar combisystem and SSTES
can fulfill over 90% of the house’s annual SH and DHW heating needs with solar
energy. It also presents the development of a three-dimensional numerical model of
the heat transfer in and around the SSTES that is validated with the data from the
year-long experiment.
The experimental results show that solar energy fulfilled 70% of the house’s annual
SH and DHW heating loads (i.e. solar fraction=70%). The principal reason for the

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lower-than-expected solar fraction was the unexpectedly high rate of heat loss from
the SSTES. It lost heat at twice the expected rate and its storage efficiency (i.e. heat
extraction/heat injection) was only 20%.
Analysis of the experimental data shows one side of the SSTES loses heat more
quickly than the other sides—it is hypothesized that the insulation surrounding the
SSTES has become partially degraded and the numerical model was modified to reflect
this. The final model has been validated by comparing it to the experimental data
using several key metrics that are presented and analyzed in this work.

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