The only ground source installations I can think of in Norway serve large office buildings and similar. The largest heat pump installation I know of in Norway is actually a third kind: water source[3]. It takes heat from the Drammen river to provide heat for a district heating system and for keeping the town centre clear of ice in the winter as well as supplying the new hospital with heat.
I imagine that the rest of the Nordic region is similar.
See:
[1] http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JR...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221313882...
[3] https://energiteknikk.net/2023/11/drammen-fjernvarme-storst-...
The biggest reason to not install ground source heat pump is high installation cost. This means that it makes more sense for larger residential buildings. Also If you have district heating available then this might be more economical in the long run.
It seems so smart.
The cost difference is pretty massive- 3-10x for a vertical system. If you live in a city or a suburb with tiny lots, that's your only option though.
Nat gas and central AC are way cheaper.
I can spec out a gas burner for about EUR 4000 and a central AC for EUR 5000, but I bet the efficiency of the ground source heater would quickly trump the cost of buying gas regularly.
There were a number of steps I had to go through. First I had to file for permission at the County Office, where they verify that drilling in the area is acceptable and that the intended pump follows regulations with respect to cooling media, and that the drilling company was certified to drill for my needs. It did cost about 70 euros.
I needed effective zero plumbing work in the house as it was already prepared to accept heating from a pump like that. Perhaps that is one of the major costs in USA?
The price of things - heat pumps and alternatives - in different regions - even different regions within the US - varies by what people are prepared to pay not what they cost to produce.
The nordics have traditionally had cheap heat pumps whereas piped gas is only in the biggest cities and I’ve never seen bottled gas in the countryside. The competitor used to be cheap electricity and wood. Ground source heat pumps for rural install have been priced to compete with wood.
In the US the market could be shaped by regulation and taxation etc. It’s the choice of the US to have cheap fossil fuels and not embrace tech instead.
Citation needed?
Efficient how? I'm sure a heat pump designed for a narrow range of input temperatures AND working with water which can transport a lot more heat should easily be more efficient.
https://www.energysage.com/heat-pumps/compare-air-source-geo... Seems to disagree
That said, we will install solar at some point and then it'll be "free" HVAC.
Why is that the case? Can't you go down to where it's like 70-80 deg C and close the gap using heat pumps? Yes, you need to put some energy in, but I would expect that the whole process would still be energy-positive at some temperature that's lower than 100C?
That’s going to be very dependant on location.
Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at surface level.
According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it.
https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-zealand/rene...
That's not all that much. That total would be about equal to the 75th largest nuclear plant in the world.
Good sites where high temperatures are near the surface are rare. California has a few, but no promising locations for more.
May not be much in world terms but here in NZ national demand maxes out at around 5.5GW so bringing another GW on stream would be quite handy. Most of the geothermal is a lot closer to Auckland* than our hydro is so so that would be another positive aspect.
* Auckland has 25% of the population so a corresponding amount of energy has to be pushed its way.
We don’t have many people. It gets worse’s though, we burn coal and are looking to fund a gas terminal. We have abundant other ways of generating power and subsidise an aluminium smelter for some reason.
Coming up next, data centres.
‘Clean, Green New Zealand.’
Turning them all into power plants would be a shame, but there is plenty of space for both.
Main problems: drilling is still expensive, managing induced seismic activity is not trivial, permitting can take long time, and you also need transmission infrastructure. Also not yet proven that companies like Fervo can scale this in reliable and low-cost way.
The idea that geothermal only works well at steam temperatures is outdated 20th-century thinking.
https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/first-networked-geother...
Maybe not quite exactly what you envision.
I'm too zonked to pick out the method from the article - but I'll offer that geo methods can be region specific. What I described fits the SE US, with our 13 month summers and abundant underground water.
Digging up streets to run distribution lines, running service drops to every existing house, installing a heat exchanger and valves in every house is astronomically expensive given the amount of energy used by a single residence.
If you’re building out a new neighborhood on a greenspace plot, installing the district heating/cooling piping is much cheaper since you’re already laying electric, water, sewer, and mane gas lines.
[1] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/schauplaetze/Windkraft-und-Erd...
Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat. We have been able to do this for a very long time. So if people aren't really doing it much, its not economical. If it was now becoming economical, the article would describe some new way of doing it that makes it economical. The article doesn't, so you "know" it isn't.
PS This has been tried many time, it only works in very specific situations, usually places where building a full PP doesn't make sense or where you are making a lot of electricity for some other purpose (mining usually).
District heating does not involve making electricity.
> Wärtsilä’s combined power generation and heat recovery plant offering comprises solutions for combined heat and power (CHP) including dynamic district heating (DDH), district cooling and power (DCAP) and trigeneration for applications that require both heating and cooling.
https://www.wartsila.com/energy/engine-power-plant-solutions...
...what? What does that have to do with district heating? The one in Poland is coal fired, the one in the UK is electric.
https://www.araner.com/blog/district-heating-in-sweden-effic...
tell that to 6% of UK electric production https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz947djd3d3o (up from 5% in 2024
(And PV works well enough in the UK for it to be a no-brainer to put on residentials roofs, which is on the whole the most expensive way to deploy it. Though this is in large part due to the way that it competes with retail prices and not wholesale prices)
Baring leaks, ground source heat pump geo will consume no water at all. Water is pumped from one layer of the aquifer and is returned to a slightly higher layer.
How do you cool the steam off enough to condense so it can go and be boiler feed water again?
Lots of power plants use cooling towers for this which are typically evaporative. Some are dry, sure, but most are wet.