Thermo-economic comparison of coal-fired boiler-based and groundwater-heat-pump based heating and cooling solution – A case study on a greenhouse in Hubei, China

•The replacing of a coal-fired boiler by a GWHP system is investigated.•The operation of each system has been monitored over one-year period.•The boiler has lower investments and covers lower thermal load than the GWHP.•GWHP shows higher economic performance considering Average Energy Price.•GWHP system may be cost effective over traditional boilers for applications. Currently in China, the replacement of coal-fired boilers by clean and renewable energy sources is considered as an essential measure to alleviate air pollution. This paper investigates the thermo-economic performance of replacing a coal-fired boiler by a Groundwater Heat Pump (GWHP) system for a greenhouse, where the GWHP system was constructed to reduce emission and also to provide cooling. The operation of this system has been monitored over a one–year period. The results show that the thermal efficiency factor of the boiler varies in the range of 0.53–0.68 and the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the GWHP system averages at 4.1 for cooling and at 3.3 for heating. Although the boiler has both lower capital costs and lower operating costs, the analysis of Average Energy Price (AEP) shows that the GWHP system has a higher economic performance, since it has a lower AEP of 0.040 USD /kWh in heating and 0.023 USD/kWh in cooling over an expecting lifetime of 20 years, in comparison to the boiler at 0.052 USD/kWh over a lifetime of 10 years. This indicates that GWHP system may be considered as an alternative over traditional boilers in terms of thermo-economic performance for applications in other places of the world with similar climate condition.