Can we heat our buildings for free? A vast, virtually untapped clean energy source is right under our shoes. I emailed last week with Robin McKim, who works for Earth FX Energy and is a strong advocate of "geo" or geothermal energy.
Does geothermal energy involve tapping into the heat from the molten core of the Earth? Isn't that incredibly dangerous and likely to cause volcanoes?
It taps into the heat stored in the earth, not the molten core. Soil everywhere is the same temperature (approx. 10-15 celcius). The system harvests this heat/cool depending on the season and incorporates it into the building. The only place in the earth that does not experience this constant temperature range is above the frost line where the ground can obviously freeze. Four feet is this frost line in our local climate, so ensuring that we dig below 5 feet is a guarantee that the system will function at full capacity.
You say that you need to only tap five feet into the ground to tap Earth's heat. How does that work?
This depth is only used in horizontal geo, one of four installation configurations. If the building has a good deal of land around it, 5 foot deep trenches are dug and several hundred feet of piping are installed in the horizontal configuration. In the case of having not a lot of property, vertical installation is necessary involving drilling around 200-300ft straight down. In the case of a small urban building this drilling would have to be done multiple times to accomodate the large load of energy needed to heat and cool the building. However, the holes for drilling are only about 6 inches wide.
What can you use that energy for? Home heat? Water heating? Electricity?
When I wrote my thesis paper on renewables in Canada, I was looking for the most practical technology to reduce emissions. I said to myself, "what takes up the most energy in the typical house." As one might expect, heating and cooling account for the greatest portion of energy usage (around 70% in the typical home). Therefore a technology that addresses that would be the most practical in terms of lowering household consumption and emissions.
Geothermal energy has nothing to do with electricity. It cannot operate a single lightbulb. It strictly provides energy in the heating and cooling form. As well as controlling the climate of the house with a water-to-air heat transfer, water-to-water systems are available as well so that one can heat the water tank and infloor heating if installed.
Why hasn't this technology been exploited yet?
This is the most puzzling question you could ask. No one really knows. People are afraid of the upfront costs, but as you'll see in the following question, it is not really an issue. Some people just can't believe it will work. They think it's too good to be true and are afraid. But finally, I would say that lack of exposure is chief among causes restricting it.
Can you point me to some good websites that can illustrate your point further?
nextenergysolutions.com is the national leader in systems distribution. They import American models and sell them nationwide. There site has a good background on the nature of the technology.
earthfxenergy.com is the company I currently work for and has the same information as nextenergy, but condensed a little more.
How much would it cost for a family of four in a modest house, both rural and urban, to set up the system? How long for there to be a return on the investment?
A 2000 sq. ft. house with 4 occupants in a rural setting generally costs about $20 000 for horizontal installation (around $9 000 more than the cost of a new furnace and AC unit).
The same dwelling with a vertical installation (urban) would be about $3 000 more.
As for the ROI, it is actually incredible. For example, EarthFX energy, the company I'm with has never installed a system that has been payed back in longer than 5 years. On top of that, 10% has been the lowest rate of return during that 5 year period. One client experience a 20% return while the system payed for itself in less than 3 years.
As far as environmental friendliness goes, given the same home we discussed above, the installation of a geo system equates to taking 4 cars off the road per year or planting 750 trees. The system lasts 25 years (like conventional systems) so that's the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road or planting 18 750 trees.
Very interesting. Here are some more sites to check out:
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