112
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
112 points (98.3% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5239 readers
456 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
We got one late last year. They used to be very, very rare in the Netherlands, but after record breaking heat over several summers, people had enough and bought air conditioners. Modern dutch houses are well insulated, but you can only keep the heat out for so long. And once the heat does get in, it’s staying in. So, air conditioners to the rescue. Shit’s unliveable otherwise.
We’ve got solar panels, so we can effectively run the air conditioners for free as long as the sun’s out. Same thing with others on our block who have them.
Now, there’s people who will tell you that you shouldn’t use aircon, that it’s bad for the environment, etc. But since we run them off solar, I’m not going to feel bad about it. I bet in ten years every house here will have them, solar or not.
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.