A solar assisted seasonal borehole thermal energy system for a non-residential building in the Mediterranean area.

• Thermal energy demand evaluation for typical school buildings. • Design and optimisation of a solar assisted seasonal borehole thermal energy system. • Several dynamic energy simulations located southern Italy were considered. • The payback time of the proposed plant was investigated. Solar heating and cooling systems are reliable and feasible solutions among renewable energy technologies. Indeed, solar thermal devices help reduce primary energy consumption and can reduce electricity demand, thus representing one of the best options for satisfying heating and/or cooling energy supply. The Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) represents one of the best promising option among the various storage technologies, because the size of the storage can be easily extended by drilling additional boreholes and simply connecting the pipes to the existing boreholes; the overall energy efficiency of this system is about 40–60%. In this paper, the authors present an application of this technology for the heating system of a school building located in the Southern part of Italy. Two different energy schemes are presented: a school equipped with a conventional gas boiler system with radiators and the same school building with a low temperature heat pump system with fan-coils. All simulations were performed in dynamic state by using TRNSYS software. The results of the analysis assessing the energy and economic performances of the two systems highlighting the advantages of the BTES application in the context of Italian market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]