Geothermal Pumps Heat and Cool Efficiently
The bigger the building, the higher the cost of heating and cooling it, leaving an equally big carbon footprint.
Corporate business is sitting up and paying attention to the ever rising energy costs to heat and cool its many gigantic buildings.
Walmart uses windmills in a few of its parking lots; Target has plants on some of its roofs to keep the buildings cool even as it reduces rainwater runoff.
Now, Ikea, the Swedish home furnishing store, tries to raise Americans' awareness of renewable resources by working with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory to make use of underground heat to manage temperatures inside its new 415,000 square feet (38,550 square meters) retail store near Denver. This mega store is slated to open next year.
Geothermal heat pumps take advantage of the fact that despite the highs and lows on surface temperatures, deep underground, temperatures stay pretty moderate — about 45 degrees Fahrenheit to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
In Colorado, Ikea plans to drill 130 holes to a depth of 500 feet beneath the building's parking garage and install pipes that send liquid down to capture that moderate temperature and run that same liquid back up to a heat pump.
The pump will either cool or heat the in-store air, depending on the season.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that geothermal heat pumps, also called GeoExchange or ground-source pumps, can reduce energy consumption and emissions by up to 72% compared with electric resistance heating and standard air-conditioning.
Of course, there is a reason why most applications of this system are used by corporations like Ikea. It costs a good deal of money. That is, for now, it costs a great deal of money. Photovoltaic solar panels used to be forbiddingly expensive, but they're getting cheaper as technology improves and economies of scale in greater production and sales make it cheaper than it used to be, before the technology became mainstream.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati