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How do geothermal heat pumps work?
October 31, 2007
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Let’s start by understanding how an air conditioner works:
A heat pump is an air conditioner that is reversible. When you want heat inside the house, you take the air conditioner’s hot coils and put them inside rather than outside.
Most air conditioners and heat pumps use the outside air to blow over the coils. In the summer that means you are using 90 or 100 degree F air to cool the outside coils. In the winter you are using 20 or 30 degree F air to heat the outside coils.
With a geothermal heat pump, you are using water that has been running through the ground to heat or cool the outsde coil. Since the ground maintains a constant temperature of about 55 degrees (in the U.S.), it makes the heat pump far more efficient in both summer and winter, and especially in the summer.
See also: How Refrigerators Work
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6 Responses to “How do geothermal heat pumps work?”
you didnt help me
[...] Marshall Answered: Imagine the normal home air conditioner (see How Air Conditioners Work for details). The hot coils are outside trying to dump the heat of compression. The air temperature might be 90 or 100 degrees, so the dumping of heat is not very efficient. If you could somehow submerge those hot coils in cool water rather than hot air, the AC would run a lot more efficiently. This is the basic idea behind a geothermal AC system. Cool water is pumped from a well (or the coils are buried ten feet underground where the temperature of the soil is a stable 60 degrees or so). It saves a lot of money on the AC. If you use a heat pump, you can get the same benefit for heating too. For more info see How do geothermal heat pumps work? [...]
Henry says: This has some great information. I work for a great company in Florida, Egg Systems, and we have been hard at work spreading the word about geothermal heat pumps. Especially when you consider the 30% tax credit now available, state incentives, and energy savings – it’s becoming a lot more affordable. Great information and thanks for sharing!
Henry
http://www.geothermalexperts.net
Hannah says: Egg geothermal heat pumps sound green to me! Does Egg Geothermal work in Atlanta Georgia also? Are there Green tax incentives and credits related to the stimulus package in Georgia? Very informative Egg geothermal website. Hope to see them around the web more.
That is a great explanation of geothermal. Here is another example http://geothermalexperts.net/residential_systems.html
Marshall, I am getting my certification as a GSHP designer. I actually submitted a report to the US Congress on the potential use of GSHP at NASA facilities as part of my current job. I did a similar study for the Customs and Border Protection Leadership Academy at Harpers Ferry. The biggest drawback of a GSHP system is the initial cost. So for retrofits it may take a long time to realize the savings. However if planned on early — before construction of a facility starts, the economic advantages generally pay back in a very reasonable time.
-Axt