Rise in Natural Gas Costs Prompt...Look at Geothermal System

[jpak]

http://www.enn.com/alt.html?id=322

The five-foot-deep trench zig-zagging across John Aylesworth's yard could help him battle high heating costs this winter.

Heating and cooling his treasured but drafty 88-year-old homestead in rural Porter County cost him close to $1,200 last year,

Aylesworth said. "And I foresee the cost of natural gas going up drastically this fall," he added.

Hoping to stay ahead of the game, Aylesworth earlier this summer had workers dig the trench and install a heating and cooling system that doesn't need natural gas. Instead, it uses the earth's own thermal capabilities.

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[phantom power]

1. That can help anybody with $10K and enough land to install it.

Considering that America's average per-capita savings was recently assessed at exactly $0.00, I'm guessing it's not an option for many people.

[skids]

4. "Trickle down"

I'm no fan of "trickle down" a.k.a. "trickle-on" economics, but in this case a "trickle-across" effect might be acheivable. Nor do I hold "house flippers" in any high regard, whether or not they make improvements. However, if the owners could be encouraged to install systems like this and solar space heating or water heating systems before resale of a house, it might make the houses more expensive but along with the savings on heating/AC bills, these systems could actually make mortgages more affordable (and more desirable on the market.)

Mortgages almost always have >15 year term. Solar and geothermal heating has payback periods shorter than this. For people not considering selling, an equity loan might make this practical -- if they haven't already tapped all their equity to pay off other debt, that is.

So positive publicity for these "home improvements" is desirable.

[phantom power]

6. I think they are great. I'm just feeling rather gloomy about our

ability to afford them, or any other solution, as a nation. I do agree that if people stayed in their homes longer, we'd see more investment in stuff like this, since people would be around long enough to get the payback. Who knows, that might be a benefit of a housing bust.

Another way to look at it: it's a classic example of how a government could make the situation better. Either increase building standards to include more conservation measures, at somewhat higher cost, or offer higher incentives. Personally, I think the best answer is building standards. It ensures that every new home has improved efficiency, and it puts all building contractors on a level playing field.

My view about energy and conservation is: any solution that is unaffordable to 90% of the country, is not a solution.

People should do whatever they can afford, but if 90% of America is left with unaffordable energy, this country is going to be unrecognizeable in 25 years. And not in a good way.

[jpak]

5. And $3000 to $5000 annual heating bills are an option????

According to the article, this system would pay for itself rather quickly.

and probably more so if the house wasn't so "drafty"....

[phantom power]

7. Well, if you consider 10 years "quick".

I don't know what's an option. Most people are going to find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. They won't be able to afford their utility bills, but then they also won't be able to afford to do anything about it.

This is exactly why guys like Kunstler predict total economic disaster. Maybe guys like Kunstler are right. It's the reason that forward thinking people have been begging America for years to do something about our energy problems, before it's too late. Well, now it looks like "too late" may have come around on the calendar.

Watching how easily Katrina turned us upside down, and caused fuel prices to skyrocket, has had me feeling pretty pessimistic. It's the ripple effect that scare me the most. This is going to play out for years, even assuming prices stabilize. And I don't see any reason to believe prices are finished rising yet.

[jpak]

12. 10 years is conservative

NG prices are NOT going to decrease in the coming years, and "expensive" investments home energy systems like geothermal and PV are going to look absolutely brilliant 5 years down the road.

....and the alternative is?????????

[phantom power]

14. As I said, I don't really know what the alternative is.

This week, my gloomy, pessimistic theory is that there are no alteratives. Which means Kunstler will turn out to be right.

On a slightly less pessimistic note, I think there is a lot of leverage to be had simply by improving basic insulation, weather stipping, etc. You pointed out that this guy admits his house is "drafty." He could probably have gotten a lot of improvement by just sealing up his house, upgrading insulation, etc. And for a lot less than $10K.

I think most Americans could scrape together enough money to upgrade their insulation, and/or weather stripping.

Regardless I don't see how most Americans will ever be able to afford a geothermal installation. Whether or not I have an alternative doesn't change my conclusion.

[skids]

28. In investment terms, even ten years is quick.

You could take out a 15-year home equity line of credit at 6%ish and apply power bill savings into the payments. If the savings are $1000, They would meet the interest payments ($600/yr to start and trending down.) At most (depending on terms) for the first couple years you'd have to pay a minimum chunk of the principal which might be a couple hundred more than you saved. Ergo, your system costs you nothing but some paperwork, and may eek out a bit of profit above the minimum payments. Once the loan is done, is has added equity to your real estate, and continues to save money.

Your house insurance and property taxes might go up a few bucks per year to cover the extra equity, but that's a minor amount.

There is the minor risk that energy will suddenly become cheap and abundant. At this point, though, that's a pretty minor risk.

[Massacure]

23. That is why it needs to be done in new construction.

Doing geothermal during new construction is much cheaper than having to dig out hte backyard a second time.

[phantom power]

24. It will only happen if it becomes a building code.

Otherwise, no builder will touch it, due to the Spanish prisoner dilemma: If one builder does, they will be undercut on price by the other builders who don't.

[MuseRider]

2. We are getting bids for this

where we are going to build (maybe/maybe not now). It is expensive but saves on your cost and usage. We have also looked into a heatsink in the pond but it may not be deep enough.

[corkhead]

3. I've got one

I have a Waterfurnace that cost about an extra $3000 over a regular one. I live in Michigan and keep my thermostat at 70 degrees year around, and my largest electric bill was about $100, in a dead of winter cold month. I highly recommend. Cheap to operate, and cleaner than burning fossil fuels. I would buy another in a heartbeat

[NNadir]

8. These "geothermal" systems are merely heat pumps.

The usual misrepresentation is, one supposes to represent them as a source of energy, just like hydrogen is mirepresented as a source of energy.

Usually the electrical pump compressing the refrigerant is driven by electricity. Sometimes the heat transfer fluid in these systems is good old antifreeze. Leaks of course, can have some consequence over the long term on ground water.

To the extent that the electric compressor(s) and pump(s) (are) driven by nuclear power, this scheme can good for the environment by slightly increasing efficiency of electrical heating systems.

Like all of this stuff, as pointed out by other posters, its another toy for rich people. It is not generally applicable to humanity as a whole.

[bananas]

9. What are you talking about?

A ground-source heat pump extracts heat from the ground,
not from a nuclear power plant.

[phantom power]

10. Yes, but the heat pump that does the extracting runs on electricity.

Any heat-pump system requires energy input, either from the electric grid, or some other energy source.

[NNadir]

11. Um, I don't know if you've ever heard of the First Law of Thermodynamics.

The electricity is the means by which the energy (heat) is pumped from one point (the ground) to another (the house). Electricity in the United States is only cleanly generated (to a measurable extent) via hydroelectric and nuclear means.

The fellow in the link in the original post is telling you about his gas bill, but not his electric bill. I could not use any gas at all in my house by putting an electric heater in each of my rooms. Big deal.

There is no measurable energy being "created" in the ground, although the people who have designated this system as "geothermal" would like Americans (who have an abysmal understanding of the laws of thermodynamics - they think Congress can repeal them) would like you to think otherwise. What the ground does have, to some extent, over other heat reservoirs, is low heat transfer properties.

Here is just one marketing blurb on these systems, put out, appropriately by an electric company in Canada:

http://www.bchydro.com/powersmart/elibrary/elibrary685.html

Real "geothermal" systems from which energy is actually extracted involve magma usually, or at least extremely hot rocks.

Here is a real schematic of a real geothermal plant:

http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/geothermal.htm

There was a big heat pump frenzy in the 1970's too, and it chugged along up until the present. Lots of people bragged about installing them, and then you heard very little from the same people afterwards. Many quietly reinstalled gas or oil heaters. A fellow tried to sell me one of these "geothermal" systems a few years ago, in fact. I think back in the 1970's people were somewhat better educated than they are today, at least with respect to science. The first law of thermodynamics states this: Energy is neither created or destroyed. In modern times we have come to understand that matter and energy are facets of one another.

[bananas]

17. You know better than that

I remember you now - you're a big advocate of nuclear power.

You wrote, "The electricity is the means by which the energy (heat) is pumped from one point (the ground) to another (the house)."
Well, trucks are the means by which the uranium is transferred from the mine to the nuclear power plant - using your logic, nuclear power plants actually run on diesel fuel.

From the bchydro.com link you gave:
"It can save over 50% on heating costs compared with electric resistance heating"
That's the bottom line - about half the BTU is coming from the ground instead of the socket. As you say - energy can't be created or destroyed, so if it's not coming from the socket, where is it coming from? The ground.

Yes, the old heat pumps used outside air as the energy source,
they became unpopular when the energy crisis ended,
the same thing happened with cars - during the energy crisis,
people traded in their gas guzzlers for Rabbits with diesel engines.
The energy crisis ended, and the Rabbits disappeared.
Today people are dumping their SUV's for a Prius,
and heat pumps are coming back, this time ground-source ones.

We passed by a black hole and went through a time warp,
the Club of Rome has been replaced by Peak Oil,
the end of civilization is near.

Here's a website you'd like, if you haven't seen it yet.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/

[phantom power]

18. Energy is pumped from the ground, but it requires...

additional energy to pump it. If you want to move "X" joules of energy from (A) to (B), you have to expend an addional amount of energy "Y" The value of Y is governed by the temperature difference between A and B, and the laws of thermodynamics.

The energy "Y" does not come out of the ground. It must be supplied externally. From the grid, from a generator, what-have-you. But it is external.

[bananas]

19. So you agree with me, and disagree with NNADIR

NNADIR said X=0, no energy comes from the ground,
it all comes from the electric socket.
I say X>0, there is energy coming from the ground.
What do you say - is X=0 or is X>0?

[phantom power]

20. That isn't what NNadir said.

He's aware that there is an X > 0. His point is that "Y" has to come from the electric grid.

[bananas]

21. Yes he did

Here's an exact quote:
"There is no measurable energy being "created" in the ground,..."

Then he gives a link to bchydro which says 50% of the heat is coming from the ground, proving himself wrong. Duh.

Another quote:
"The fellow in the link in the original post is telling you about his gas bill, but not his electric bill. I could not use any gas at all in my house by putting an electric heater in each of my rooms. Big deal.

The bchydro web page compares a pure electric resistive heat system to a ground-source heat pump, and says that the ground-source heat pump uses half the energy of the pure resistive system.

In terms of your equations, X=Y, half the energy is coming from the ground. He said "no measurable energy", X=0 as measured on the wattmeter.

[phantom power]

22. Well, he is correct: no energy is being created in the ground.

Energy is being pumped from one place to another. At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I'm pretty sure his point was that some people might confuse this setup with a geothermal generation station, where electrical energy is generated from heat energy in the ground.

Actually, Y is generally less than X. To pump X joules of energy, you typically need only a fraction of X. I forget the details, but it all depends on the temperature gradient. If the gradient is high enough, maybe Y can grow larger than X?

The "geothermal" heat pumps are definitely more efficient than air heat pumps. The reason is that the ground (or a pond) accepts or gives up heat easier than air does. So the system doesn't have to work as hard. That translates into a smaller "Y".

(edit) Oh yeah, I forgot the other big reason they are more efficient: that temperature gradient. In the winter, it's easier to pump heat from ground at 55F, than cold winter air, at 20F (or whatever). In the summer, it's easier to pump heat into the ground at 55F, than the summer air at 80F (or in our case, 110F).

[bananas]

25. I see what he was trying to say now.

I've read over the thread a few times and I see what happened.

When he said "The usual misrepresentation is, one supposes to represent them as a source of energy" by "energy" he meant "electricity", as in a geothermal electric generator.
I thought he meant "energy" as in BTU, since they were talking
about home heating.

That's where the confusion began - he said "energy" when he meant
"electricity".

Then he made some non-sequitor about it being run by nuclear power,
so I asked him what he was talking about.
(I see now that he was saying it would go well with nuclear power)

His response was less than enlightening,
he started by wondering if I heard of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
He implied that that savings in the gas bill would be completely
offset by increases in the electric bill (X=0),
and that no energy was being created (X=0).
That's why I replied "You know better than that",
he said it twice, it didn't seem like a careless mistake.

He claimed that these weren't real "geothermal systems",
but I had been taught in grammar school that "geo" means "earth"
and "thermal" means "heat" and so that is exactly what they are.
Now I see that he meant "geothermal electrical generators",
thank you.

The conversation degenerated from there.

[hunter]

27. When I think of "geothermal" I think of Iceland or Boise, Idaho.

Not heat pumps, but actual hot water from the ground. It sort of irritates me that the heat pump people have stolen the term.

[jpak]

13. toy for rich people. It is not generally applicable to humanity as a whole

Yeah and nuclear power is not an "expensive toy" for "rich countries" and will "serve humanity" on a sustainable basis?????

:rofl:

[NNadir]

15. Um, why don't we just go back to crying about the oil platforms?

Thread after thread after thread.

How many of those billions of solar PV systems have been distributed in New Orleans? Do they double as cots at night?

How many solar only advocates are driving their solar powered cars out of harm's way, or do these cars only get as far as the liquor store?

This is not a silver lining, because there is no silver lining on this disaster: Still, the disaster points up the bankruptcy of poorly educated fossil fuel apologists who are unfamiliar with thermodynamics.

Let's be clear: The failure to rely on wishful thinking as opposed to realistic industrialized solutions to global climate change have a profound effect on the causation of these events.

Fifty percent - and there are exactly two of them - of those poorly fossil fuel apologists, aka the "solar only" crowd, who I know have been doing nothing but whining and crying and whining and crying about the loss of fossil fuels in the last week.

Typical and telling.

There haven't been too many complaints about the deaths of the poor of course except to note that the "could" have electricity if they had portable PV panels. The also "could" have had their lives if they had a few tens of thousands of dollars lying around. Shit, for $1000 bucks, 1/20th of what a magical solar system costs, they could have got a bus ticket out of town.

Come back and crow when there is one solar plant on earth that is producing electricity wholesale at less than $0.20 kilowatt-hour, a mere factor of ten over what the costs of what nuclear plants produce.

http://www.dukepower.com/news/releases/2003/Aug/2003081301.asp

http://www.solarbuzz.com/

I would suggest that the members of the Albus Dumbledore Memorial "Solar Only" Society crowd take some time out of crying about the oil and gas to learn some remedial thermodynamics. They have excellent books in the junior section of many public libraries and assuming that one learns how to add and subtract, as well as compare two numbers, one can actually understand some science from them. I got one for my fifth grader last week. Now he understands the difference between a heat pump and geothermal energy. He also understands the difference between magic and physics.

[jpak]

16. The "solar-only" straw man is your creation

not mine.

As is the Ignorant Greenpeace Twit straw man.

Both stupid and wrong.

Not a single post goes by without a sickfuck ad homnium attack.

Telling indeed.

BTW I look forward to using my nuclear-powered car to evacuate from the next storm as do all those poor refugees from New Orleans.

...and I will be looking forward to all the "whining and crying" this winter when pronuclear twits in NJ can't heat there homes due to natural gas shortages.

:rofl:

[MuseRider]

26. We spoke with an installer

2 days ago. We are doing this, it should pay off in 6 years. The lines will be sunk into the pond. I will let everyone know how this goes next year when the house is up and running. It sounds wonderful but it is terribly expensive. We are doing it and giving up a few other things to do it. The references we called, people who live close by who have them, say that rarely in the last 2 years since our summers and winters have been rather mild has their system had to kick in. Their electric bills are tiny. So, we will be happy to use less not only for the bills but for the environment.

[Oerdin]

29. Geothermal is great if...

You live in an area which has a geothermal heat source. Volcanos, very active faults, this crustal areas, and residual heat zones from past volcanic activity are great for this, however, very few locations have those things. Here in California we have two areas which produce geothermal power one is near Mount Lassen National Volcanic Monument and the other is in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego near the US-Mexico border. Mount Lassen doesn't get much new geothermal heat these days so all we're really doing is removing residual geologic heat from the past volcanic eruption which doesn't get replaced so once it is gone then it is gone until we get a new supply of magma moving up. It doesn't look like that area will remain viable for much longer as the power plant has already sucked so much heat out of the ground that local geysers have stopped working and gone extinct.

Imperial county's geothermal plant is much more sustainable. It takes advantage of the especially thing continental crust in that area (and thus the much higher geothermal gradient) due to Baja California rifting off of the mainland. That plant will be sustainable for a very long time since new heat continually rises up in that area. That's it for viable geothermal sites in the CA, NV, AZ area though so while geothermal is nice if you have the right conditions those conditions are just not very common.

[skids]

30. Wrong.

That's a different type of geothermal.

The kind described in this article can be done just about anywhere where the winter is cold and the summer is hot, and takes care of a large chunk of heating and cooling needs. It doesn't go deep, just a couple feet below the frost line, and uses the ground as a heat battery, shoving heat in during the summer (and getting cooler air back out) and withdrawing it during the winter. You don't need a continuous geothermal source.

These types of installations can self-finance -- take out a home equity loan to build it, and pay the loan off with the savings in heating and cooling costs.

As for the other type, deep geothermal for centralised electricity generation, there is a recent assessment of Western U.S. assets:

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=52230

[dcfirefighter]

31. Double Wrong on you

the last poster was speaking of Geothermal generation - taking high quality heat from the ground and using it. It requires a thin crust or a magma upwelling.

This thread is about Ground Source Heat Pumps - which alternately take heat from the ground and put heat in the ground. They are heat pumps that use the earth as a heat sink rather than the air.

[skids]

32. No duh...

Reading comprehension problem? Try again.

[Oerdin]

33. You're using the wrong term.

Geothermal is what I and DCfirefighter were speaking about where as you are speaking about a heat pump. Heat pumps (also called geothermal exchange in order to highlight the difference from traditional geothermal) will not create the massive amounts of electricity generated by a normal power plant and instead are mostly useful for single family home use. Here's a wikipedia article explaining geothermal power generation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal

Where as this is the how a heat pump works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

They are two very different things please stop confusing the two.

[skids]

34. Ehem.

Even the "Geothermal Education Office" classifies "heat pumps" as a form of "geothermal" power use.

http://geothermal.marin.org/

But live in your own little universe if you guys feel like it.

(EDIT: you do realize that if the heat pump were turned off, the temperature would gradually equalize to it's normal state. Oh, and you do realize that a cold (below ambient) reservior is as much a power source as a hot one is, right?)

[struggle4progress]

35. Utility company says prepare for record-high natural gas prices (IA)

DES MOINES, Iowa Officials with MidAmerican Energy say customers should brace themselves for record high heating costs this winter.

Spokeswoman Michelle Reuter says customers should begin now and look for ways to conserve energy.

She says the cost of natural gas is expected to be as much as 40 percent more than last year.

A MidAmerican vice president, Jeff Gust, says natural gas prices are reaching unprecedented levels. <snip>

http://www.kwqc.com/Global/story.asp?S=3865373&nav=7k7NJ1IJ

[Boomer]

36. How much land do you need?

I'd love to install this and would be willing to liquidate investments to pay for it. But my house is built on a modest city lot and I wonder if I have sufficient ground.

[dcfirefighter]

37. Vertical wells are generally an option at greater expense n/t

[skids]

38. Find a local company...

...and have them come out and do a site survey and give an estimate and recommendations.

[Nihil]

39. Hope this helps ...

> For every unit of electricity used to pump the heat, 3-4 units of
> heat are produced.

> ...

> The ground loop can be:
>
> 1) borehole;
>
> 2) straight horizontal - trench costs less than a borehole,
> but needs more land area;
>
> 3) spiral horizontal (or 'slinky coil') - needs a trench of
> about 10m length to provide about 1kW of heating load.

The above was taken from the ground source heat pump section of an
excellent UK web site:
http://www.est.org.uk/myhome/generating/types/groundsource/

(FWIW, I'd recommend the rest of the site to anyone over here ...)

[Boomer]

40. Thanks!