GEO® Hourly Building Design
GEO® Hourly – patented zone-by-zone building/HVAC geothermal design software performs hour-by-hour simulations and evaluates energy, heat pump equipment selection, and ground Loop/ground heat-exchanger sizing.
The cloud-based software uses intelligent simultaneous dual hour-by-hour design from built-in climate, building use, and equipment Libraries. Optimized Hybrid design supports cooling towers, fluid coolers, boiler, or auxillary electric heat.
Traditional design methods fail to help designers select the proper heat pump equipment size required for each building zone. The Geo® Hourly approach to geothermal design solves this issue by integrating heat pump equipment selection and ground loop design into a single method.
What GEO® Hourly does
Evaluates realistic heat pump operations, internal occupancy heat, and corrects heat pump capacities and performance hour-by-hour for individual zones.
• GEO® Hourly corrects lab-tested heat pump capacity and performance data to accurately reflect how equipment operates under real-world building conditions, bypassing standard testing conditions that fail to mirror true field performance.
• By integrating realistic equipment sizing directly with ground heat exchanger (loop) design, the software generates a highly precise mirror of long-term thermal energy transfer into and out of the earth.
Simulates building performance, zone loads, and heat pump operation for unique hourly schedules rather than relying on sizing loops with simplified monthly averages or single design days.
Includes National Research Laboratory Hourly weather data for over 470 locations across the United States and Canada. Has 45 Building Uses. Includes over 1,000 Ground Source heat pumps.
Helps lower installation cost by optimizing ground heat exchanger length and matching heat pump equipment sizes accurately to specific building zones.
Performs detailed houly analysis (unique yearly schedule) to calculate heating and cooling operating costs in each zone and the annual economic payback.
Built in tools for evaluating hybrid configurations, such as incorporting supplementary cooling towers,boilers fluid coolers or auxillary electric heat.
Designs Vertical, Horizontal Trench and Horizontal Bore ground Loops.
Integrates the heat transferred between the building and the ground and analyses the long-term ground thermal stability.
Benefits Over Traditional Methods
GEO® Hourly estimates the actual heat pump operational cycles as it models real-world thermodynamic flutuations.
While traditional guidelines suggest the equivalent full-load hours (EFLH) method provides a simple estimate of annual loads from peak loads during the feasibility phase, this approach is outdated for modern engineering. The final design requires a thorough, integrated analysis of site loads; GEO® Hourly replaces these simplified estimates by utilizing a patented, detailed hour-by-hour method that eliminates the accuracy trade-offs of traditional EFLH approximations.
Comparison of Methods
| Feature | Equivalent Full-Load Hours (EFLH) | Hour-by-Hour Simulation (e.g., GEO® Hourly) |
|---|---|---|
| Project Phase | Feasibility / Preliminary screening | Final design / Construction documents |
| Application Scope | Restricted to small or single-zone buildings with simplified assumptions | Complex residential and commercial layouts featuring diverse, multi-zone heating and cooling demands / Multi-zone layouts |
| Ground Loop Impact | Ignores complex multi-year thermal characteristtics | Explicitly models long-term thermal imbalance |
| Equipment Sizing | Oversimplified; prone to over/under-sizing | Integrates accurate zone-level heat pump selection |
Captures the dynamic weather, occupancy schedules, and internal loads that standard peak design-day and average monthly load methods omit for a definitive design.
Avoids oversizing ground loops, which reduces initial drilling and installation expenses while maintaining system performance.
Eliminates the need for complex third-party software integration to convert monthly loads into hourly operational profiles.
Why GEO® Hourly
GEO® Hourly integrates heat pump equipment selection software, energy model software, and ground heat exchanger design software as an online application.
• Designing HVAC systems by Zone is the preferred method applied by engineers. GEO® Hourly databases offer the selection of many types and brands of heat pump equipment in each zone for matching building zone Btu design loads.
• The key to designing a good geothermal system is selecting the proper sized heat pump equipment in each zone and matching the design temperature for cooling and heating that precludes the heat pump from running out of capacity over the range of water temperatures coming from the ground. This is accompanied by an integrated design method that adapts each zone to the heat pump equipment stage applying hourly parameters; calculating heat transfer in and out of the ground and operating cost.
• Industry heat transfer physics: ASHRAE 2023 HVAC Application Handbook Chapter 35 describes the heat transfer physics used by GEO® Hourly. ASHRAE USA and Canada design weather data is used with permission.
GEO® Hourly presents comparisons of design water temperatures and economics so you can determine an adequate design that makes your project feasible.
• The integrated energy model in GEO® Hourly does an 8760-hourly analysis for each individual zone, so single, dual, and variable speed heat pump equipment can be easily compared when selecting the design water temperatures. .
• An oversized ground heat exchanger will never have the efficiency gains and operating cost savings to overcome the extra first cost.