Nowadays, the increasing of the energy consumption is producing serious
changes in the natural environment as the global warming. Around the 40%
of all greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries come from the building
equipments, where approximately 60% are produced by the air conditioning
systems. In this context, ground coupled heat pumps are an attractive solution
as air conditioning systems in commercial buildings due to their higher
efficiency compared with the conventional air to water heat pump. In fact,
the American Environmental Protection Agency recognizes ground coupled
heat pump systems among the most efficient and comfortable systems available
today. Nevertheless, the energy efficiency of the ground coupled heat
pumps could be improve by means a properly management of the dierent
equipments which form them.

The objective of the research of this PhD thesis will be the development
of management strategies in the air conditioning system based on the ground
coupled heat pumps to improve its energy efficiency at the same time that we
keep the thermal comfort in the conditioned areas. The energy management
strategies will be oriented in the three ways: combining of several generation
systems (ground coupled heat pump and air to water heat pump), decoupling
thermal generation from thermal distribution (by means a thermal storage
device) and strategies based on the management of the devices of the system
(by means of continuous regulation of them).

From the results of this research we can obtain two main conclusions.
The rst one is that a properly management of a system composed by a
thermal storage, an air to water heat pump and a ground coupled heat pump
produce an improvement of the energy efficiency around a 40% respect to a
conventional system and around a 18% respect to a geothermal system. The
second main conclusion of this thesis is that a properly management strategy
in continuous regulation of the devices which are part of a ground coupled
heat pump system produce a energy savings around of the 24% respect to
the conventional management systems.