(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . From Practically Perfect to Perfectly Practical: Networked Ground Source Heat Pumps [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-09 Really exciting news about geothermal heat pumps last week! My heating fantasy becoming a reality. Networking geothermal systems using natural gas lines is a win for everyone. Here’s the story ... Federal and state governments are providing generous incentives to replace oil and gas furnaces with heat pumps. Heat pumps are far more efficient than oil and gas, made possible in all regions of the United States by the recent innovation in low temperature heat pumps. Low temperature heat pumps allow heat to be extracted even from very cold air that is well below freezing. However, the coolest and funnest heat pumps are geothermal. Once you get about six feet under ground, the temperature is a constant 55 degrees, (or thereabout depending on location). So the air heated by fluid passed through the ground only needs to be increased by 20 degrees to make your home nice and comfortable. The problem with installing a ground source heat pump is that it is so expensive, $50,000 in my neighborhood. A ground source heat pump first requires drilling a well that is up to 450 feet deep, or even deeper for a large house. Alternatives are to dig about 450 of six 6-feet deep trench in a field near your house or access a deep body of water. However, few existing homes have this as an option. So, if you are like me, you long for a ground source heat pump, but eventually go with the air source version. To solve this problem, an organization called HEET came up with the idea of networked geothermal. Pipes, currently used for delivering natural gas, can be redeployed to deliver fluid that has been heated to 55 degrees by the earth to each home. The homeowner just needs to install the heat pump. It becomes the job of the local utility to dig whatever additional wells are needed for a community. Eversource, the electric and natural gas supplier in eastern Massachusetts, is piloting networked geothermal in a community in Framingham, MA. Read about it here. ... beginning Tuesday, their neighborhood will be part of a pilot climate solution that connects 37 homes and businesses with a highly-efficient, underground heating and cooling system. Even taking into account that several of the buildings will be switching from natural gas to electricity, people are expected to see their electric bills drop by 20% on average. It’s a model some experts say can be scaled up and replicated elsewhere. ...Tuesday, being June 4. The Framingham system consists of a giant underground loop filled with water and antifreeze, similar to the way gas is delivered to several houses in a neighborhood. Water in the loop absorbs heat from underground, which remains at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) all year. Networked geothermal is a win for everyone. Utilities can get a lot of the energy they are selling from the earth right below your home. The earth below your home also serves as a battery, storing excess heat in the summer and releasing it in the winter. Geothermal is uber efficient, taking pressure off the electric grid. The gas pipes between houses are generally six feet below ground, so heat is extracted from the earth as the fluid in the geothermal system passes from one house to the next. The utility can dig as many additional wells as needed in a community in one go, which will be far more efficient than each homeowner digging a well on their own property. Most of the capital cost is borne by the utility, not the homeowner. For any community with natural gas, the delivery pipes are already in place. The only additional infrastructure is the heat pump installed by the homeowner. For me personally, this is very exciting. We upgraded our heating system under both Pres. Obama and Pres. Biden. Each time, we considered geothermal but ruled it out because of the installation cost. I decided this time around, I was going to start saving so that the next time we need a new system, we would have the money for geothermal. But, maybe we won’t need to! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/9/2245667/-Networked-Ground-Source-Heat-Pumps?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/