Comments on: STEAMING PILE: New Geothermal Capitol to Attract Businesses?

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By: » STEAMING PILE: New Geothermal Capitol to Attract Businesses?

» STEAMING PILE: New Geothermal Capitol to Attract Businesses? — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 22:11:24 +0000

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By: Eric Rinard

Eric Rinard — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 18:57:09 +0000

I rise to defend the technology of "geothermal heating and cooling" but a better name is "ground-source heat pump." By using electricity to move heat from a building into the ground, or from the ground into a building, it has an effective efficiency of multiple hundreds of percent (by moving several times more energy than is consumed to do said moving.) I don't, however, defend a government project with a 50-year ROI. In residential applications the ROI is usually around 3-5 years when compared to propane and 6-10 years compared to natural gas (provided that there wasn't already a serviceable heating system already in place.) Did the capitol's heating system require replacment anyway? Is the $6 million the difference in cost, or the total cost of the new system? Either way, government will never do anything as economically as will someone who is spending his OWN money. Just don't throw out GSHP or "geothermal" heating with the bathwater, as they say.