Exploring Geothermal Heating Cooling?

How does geothermal heating cooling works? Believe it or not, this industry has been around for more than 30 years and the installation process has become more sophisticated and less invasive.

However, please note that installing this geothermal energy at your dwelling is NOT a do-it-yourself (DIY) project (unlike solar panels and/or micro turbines).

The geothermal heating cooling systems using this energy can work in four ways:

1) Heating the water in your dwelling: The system used to heat the water is called desuperheater and it can be used to heat the water in your house under normal circumstances.

2) Heating/cooling your dwelling: This is where geothermal energy has been very successful. Geothermal heat pumps tap the energy under the ground to provide heating and cooling for your dwelling.

3) Heating dwelling with direct contact applications

4) Large scale geothermal energy use to create electricity

How does geothermal energy works?

This energy also knows as thermal energy is locked in the fluids in the earth’s crust. Earth’s temperature is usually between 40 -70 degrees Fahrenheit (approx. -5 – 20 degrees Celsius). Therefore, a geothermal energy heat pump either pulls energy from your house into the group making it cooler or pumps heat into the house (from under ground) making it warmer. Additionally, you would use geothermal energy to operate these pumps so they are very quiet and do not rely on fossil fuel generated electricity.

However, if you install a geothermal heat pump, you will still need traditional electricity to power the other appliances in your setting. The heat pump will be used only to heat/cool your house.

Click here for geothermal heat pumps information

You can take advantage of federal tax credits to reduce the cost of geothermal heat pump installation and take advantage of geothermal heating cooling systems.

Click here for Federal Tax Credits information

Geothermal energy can be used to generate electricity to either supplement or replace traditional electricity in your setting. This is done at geothermal energy plants where very deep wells are drilled to tap into steam and/or hot water reservoirs. These wells can be as deep as 1.6 kilometers (Approx. a mile deep). There are three types of geothermal power plants: dry steam, flash, and binary that allows us to do geothermal heating cooling. Dry steam taps the steam under the earth to turn a turbine that in turns create electricity. Flash is a way to use high-pressure hot water to create steam by pulling it into cold water. Binary geothermal plans combine hot water and another liquid (that has a low boiling temperature) to create steam that in turn is used to turn the turbine. Due to high success rate of this method, it seems that most geothermal power plants will be using the binary technology in future.

Here are some geothermal energy facts?

1) Italy was the first country to tap into geothermal energy to create electricity in 1904.

2) Geothermal energy is generated in over 20 countries. The United States is the world's largest producer and other countries include Iceland, the United States, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Italy, France, Lithuania, New Zealand, Mexico, the People's Republic of China and Japan. In Iceland, due to active volcanoes and presence of hot springs, many buildings (including swimming pools) use the geothermal heating cooling systems.

3) The largest geothermal area in the United States is The Geysers north of San Francisco in California. The reason the biggest geothermal site is in California since it lies on the fault line. Most geothermal reservoirs are found in areas of high earthquake or volcanic activities due to proximity to plate boundaries. The place where geothermal activity happens is called ring of fire . In the United States, that happens to be in the Pacific Ocean.

4) One has to drill into the ground to find out if geothermal energy is available at a site. Measuring the earth’s temperature is the only way to decide whether to install the geothermal heat pump or create a geothermal power plant at a site.

Where is geothermal energy used?

Other than cooling/heating of buildings and heating water, this energy can be used for various other purposes such as:

1) Growing plants in green houses

2) To melt snow on sidewalks by installing geothermal hot water pipes. This is very common in United States cities where instead of salting the side walks; geothermal energy is being used to provide pollution/chemical free side walks in the winters.

Here are some geothermal energy pictures?

The first one is of ring of fire, the second one shows some examples of geothermal energy methods and the last one shows a geothermal energy geyser in the state of New York, United States.

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