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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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What about geothermal? Outside the city geothermal is easy enough because you can do a shallow horizontal dig.
In the city where you have very little land per house, a geothermal system requires a deep vertical dig. I wonder if being close to the water table would make that an issue. If not, then geothermal should be more energy efficient but of course the dig makes it cost prohibitive.
Or would it make sense to just dig to the water table, and directly use the ground water for cooling, then dump the warmer water back slightly more downstream. Would that work?
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that (I heard) a solar panel can be directly connected to a compressor (thus heat pump or A/C). That means no need for power regulators, inverters, batteries, etc. So that’s cool, if it’s true.
Geothermal solutions are used in The Netherlands, but solar panels are way more popular in general. A quarter of all homes here have a solar panel installation, but only around 10 percent have heat pumps/geothermal installations from what I've read. The average price for a 12 panel home solar installation is around 8.000 euros, whereas the average price of a full geothermal installation runs you around 28.000.
Now, both are promoted as alternative ways of heating your house, since the country's moving away from natural gas for that purpose. But solar's getting cheaper by the day, especially now that demand has slowed. Investing in cheap solar is preferable to geothermal from that perspective.
As for cooling, geothermal does quite well at that from what I've read. Supposedly it's better at dehumidifying, and it's a heating as well as cooling solution, compared to just cooling on older AC's. Thing is, modern air conditioners do that as well - our home installation can be used for heating in the winter as well. I can only tell you from experience that heating and cooling with our AC units works excellent. From what I've read, geothermal users have high satisfaction rates as well.
I'm no expert on things like the water table, so I honestly couldn't tell you how / what / why it would or wouldn't work.