With heat pumps, smart cooperation is as important as technology 6

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1. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 8:46 am
   05 Jan 2009

   At $10,000 per householdwe could probably install geothermal heat pumps for all 100 million households for $1 trillion, double that to take account of PV/storage to power the units, and double again for all commercial units, so instead of my original calcuation of $6 trillion -- which would allow us to shut down all coal plants -- the bill would come out to an easier $4 trillion for all residential/commercial buildings.  
   Spread out over 20 years, that's "only" $200 billion per year -- should be part of a stimulus package, no?

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2. 

   Hal 9000 Posted 9:11 am
   05 Jan 2009

   Property Rights and Transaction CostsThis seems like a good example of a technical efficiency that needs a corresponding legal and transactional efficiency to go with it. Assuming that a ground source system involves mutiple parcels of private property, each with a bank loan, the social cooperation here would legally take the form of a cross easement and maintenance agreement among each property owner. The agreement would be of record, grant appropriate property rights to each property owner, run with the land (i.e., be permanent) and provide for the common maintenance, repair, and replacement of the system. Because of provisions typical to most loan documents, lender approval of the easement and maintenance agreement would probably be required. Thus, if each property owner has to hire an attorney to knock the agreement out and get lender approval for it, the transaction cost and legal issues may become an issue or barrier to getting things done. Legally, it would be easier to do this for multi-family housing, whether owned by a single entity or put into the condominium form of ownership, because the developer can just make it so. Well systems placed within public rights of way and connecting to private property would probably require a law change. My ultimate point in noting the above is that our laws should serve the identified efficiency needs and not stand in their way. And, in a gross simplification, our property laws particularly tend not to provide for or consider more modern and necessary values such as cooperation, conservation and preservation. Thus, I agree with the point about cooperation and note, in addition, that our laws and legal system should adapt to further it.

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3. 

   Gar Lipow Posted 9:54 am
   05 Jan 2009

   $10,000I probably should have made clear. That 10,000 was in an apartment complex - with multiple units per building. I doubt that heat pumps, even shared for single family homes will get that cheap. But along both sides of a street for a block we might get to $15,000 per residence. The tradeoff in sharing comes when the cost of additional piping to move  heat long distances exceeds the savings from various economises of scale.  Sunflower at one point was claiming that even at neighborhood level, square miles, district pay offs compared to smaller units. Don't know if he still thinks that. It looks to me like for single family homes the optimum occurs at a much lower scale, though for apartments and densely populated urban areas where residents mostly live in multi-unit buildings he could be right. At any rate I think that for single family homes we will end up at $15,000 per unit or close to that, and that for apartments and multi-unit buildings that are a couple of stories or so we probably can come closer to $10,000 per unit. Where you have hundreds of units per building the cost may be even lower. On the other hand in skyscraper and mid-scrapers (anything much above five stories) you run into other problems - the need to dig boreholes, cause there is not way to serve than kind of building with broad shallow loops (unless they have really big parking lots). And I believe modifying ducting in tall buildings is a major pain. I wonder if a green builder reading this can describe the problems and potential for tall buildings, how they differ from short buildings, and how they are similar.

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4. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 10:11 am
   05 Jan 2009

   apartments more efficient?Hal9000, this indicates that governments need to be more involved in this process -- and I know this sounds pie-in-the-sky, but if local governments at least built up much of the infrastructure (piping?), then the legal issues would fade.
   If ground source heat pumps are cheaper per person for apartments, then I just want to point out that that's another benefit of apartment buildings, in addition to the lower heating costs because of the lower roof per household area, and because of the density advantages.  But I know, America wants single family homes.

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5. 

   biodiversivist Posted 10:30 am
   05 Jan 2009

   College campusesoften heat and cool with waste heat from their power plant. The steam is sent via underground tunnels to each building. This concept is also put to use in many parts of many cities.
   District heating in Denmark is a key to their low energy use.
   In a sense, a condo complex also shares energy savings. Everyone shares walls and ceilings.
   Many apartment buildings share an efficient central HVAC system shared by all occupants.
   Maintenance obligations might be a problem with a shared heat pump loop.
   
   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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6. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 10:49 am
   05 Jan 2009

   Here's an exampleIn NYC, At 360 Court Street in Brooklyn, a residentially converted church, geothermal heat pumps were selected by the developer because it was not possible to install exterior heating and cooling equipment on this historic building. And since geothermal heat pump systems require no external equipment (like roof fans or fuel tanks), the system was a perfect fit. Each apartment in this 34-unit building has its own geothermal heat pump and its own thermostat control.  
   Also, I hadn't thought of this, but you can also drive the heat pump with a gas-powered system, which I suppose could be from biogas as well.

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