I love the concept of not only "green construction" but now as you say "resilient structures." Please expand on the theme!

There are issues with cooling and heating degree-days but the concept is that as ambient temperatures depart from an average reference point of 65 degrees F, more energy is used.

Nice metric but the AMOUNT of energy indicated by degree-days is not linear ... the idea of geothermal and other passive systems is to maximize latent heat inputs and force the curve in a different direction (lower energy consumption).

Thanks for the Berkeley link but uhhh, isn't that a very moderate climate that does not require much heating or cooling, anyway?  Minnesota and Arizona seem like more extreme examples where resilient homes and buildings would be a better investment.

Onward through the fog

Oh how soon the automtive industry went back to producing fuel guzzling behemoths after the 73 oil crises. The few feeble attempts they made at producing a fuel efficient auto they could turn a profit on fell by the wayside like the dead Vega's found all over the road back then.

We all through away out Mother Earth News with the underground homes that maintained a 55 deg  temp. Face it South East here in our part of the country and soak up the winter sun through a double insulated glass facing side. The big concrete heat sink floors would soak up the heat during the day and give it off at night when you pulled the big heavy curtains on the windows. You could get one up to a comforable room temperature with a candle.

Solar with battery storage, get off the grid and seperate solar hot water.

Those were the days!

Imagine what modern computer control systems would do for our old 80's underground attempts.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

I converted my house to CFLs in the mid 1990.s not because of the electrical saving for lighting, but because the old light bulbs put out so damn much heat.  What was killing me then as far as my electrical bill was concerned was the air conditioning.  Why, I thought, was I wasting electricity twice, once to light my house, and once to cool the heat the lighting produced.  

PC's are real electricity hogs.  Apple builds a really nifty little computer, the Mac Mini.  It has as much power as the big jobs, and only uses 25 watts of power.  Most PCs waste 2 or 3 times as much electricity out of sheer inefficiency as it takes to run a Mac Mini.  The Mini uses laptop technology, lower electrical requirements in  the computing process.  

Charles Barton

District heating with seasonal heat storage, solar concentrator industrial process heat, air-to-air heat exchangers, window shutters, clotheslines, attached greenhouses, Trombe walls, ground coupling with concrete slabs, hot water solar collectors, firewood, thermal mass, white roofs, shade trees, preheat all domestic water (reduces the additional mix of hot water), refrigerators coupled to outdoor winter cold, power management, CFL, recycled materials, insulation, air leaks, efficient windows, efficient appliances, and #1 - low-cost capital.

Yes!  Conservation with geo heat exchange.  Powered by rooftop solar.  Would replace coal completely over 10 years.

I think it's the best path for now. Let the other more complex and costly parts of a 100% renewable system catch up.  Like plugin hybrids.

One note, Chicago hosts the nation's largest wind farm?  With eggbeater style wind machines on buildings.  is this rumor true?

That's why direct subsidies of 10 cents per kwh for renewable power from roof top solar, and 5 cents per kwh (or equivalent gas) for each kwh saved is the quickest simplest political path as well.  It's payed for already, just take the money out of subsidies that energy companies no longer deserve.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

 How is ocean current generation coming along in your area?  Has anyone thought of the chicago wind farm model in your area?  That coastal wind has to be pretty intense.  Gusting over the city and burbs.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

If we could harness all the hot air from the politicians we could heat the North East and provide enough wind generated electricity to light the West Coast.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

A city water system maybe is next?  With those feedback loops?  With all the drain water heat/cold captured too.  It's possible.  It sure would help prevent winter water line freezeups and stop wasting water by leaving taps open in cold weather.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I've often thought that city water supply could be used, prior to distribution, for cooling concentrator high-intensity pv, pre-heating potable water a few degrees, and thus reducing city-wide hot water loads.

...This is a good example of systems thinking, by linking the water infrastructure with the energy infrastructure, they both benefit (also called positive feedback, or even co-evolution).  Reminds me of some of the stuff John Todd has talked about; I remember his designs for cleaning urban water with water hyacinths, then raising tilapia fish, who would eat the hyacinths....Erik, maybe a post on this at a later time?  I think it's worthwhile.

It goes back to the Bucky Fuller kind of thinking.  I keep wondering what Wright would do with solar PV, for instance.  

A new era of organic design is upon us.  Buildings and energy and water systems interacting with nature symbiotically.  

Remember the Roman aqueducts?  They used the water flow for energy too, water wheels to power grain mills.  Somehow renewable energy systems remind me of it.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The beauty of geo heat exchange heating/cooling powered by solar is that it incorporates storage.  The solar energy can be stored as heat or cold right there in the building that has the system installed.  When the sun shines. It bypasses all the complicted storage schemes.

It gets the renewable smart grid going building by building paying itself off at every installation.  That way it makes sense to start out on individual projects that pay and consolidate it all into a grid that is self supporting, energy wise and financially.

Solar cogeneration, getting electricity and heat from the same installation also helps.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

We have lived in such a building for 12 years and take it for granted.  It stores heat in the winter and coolness in the summer.  Our home never changes temperature.  The comfort is amazing.

Ingredients:
Passive solar gain
Thermal mass with exterior insulation
Air-to-air heat exchanger
Window shutters
Summer night ventilation
Built to last 500 years

...I can appreciate any building structures that are self-reliant, at least in terms of heating/cooling, and some way to move water up and down a building.  As far as PV being too expensive, my response is, and coal has been quite a bargain, hasn't it? not!

what is needed to make it work?

what will the market do?

what can legislation do to give the market a nudge?

who are the lobbyists now pushing the legislation you would advocate?

what other groups can we bring in?

Or cold for cooling in hot weather or for a freezer/fridge.  Heat is stored in concrete floors, for instance, insulated from the ground with heat tubing through them.  Phase change heat storage salt that stores many times the heat as thermal mass can also be used.  It's great for domestic hot water storage.

Cold can be stored in the building thermal mass too, or for freezers and fridges with salt solution.

This way solar, wind, and off peak power from the grid can be stored using smart grid technology, in one home, or many homes and buildings gridded all up together.  Heating/cooling is the major power use in homes.  Water system pressure can even be stored.  

It's quite a fortunate coincidence that the most electric power intense needs are heating/cooling related.  Makes for low tech solar and wind power storage of the biggest load.  plugin hybrids are the other big load, they have built in storage as well.

I think the storage problem is exaggerated given these features of geo heat exchange conservation and the smart grid possibilities for timing power use.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Just shows how far our thinking should extend. Now if only what is technically possible were to become politically possible...

Just a few quick comments on tapping in to the public water supply as a ground source as suggested by some commenters. I think this idea is likely to prove a non-starter for the following reasons:

 It's no free lunch (surprise!). Existing water systems would need to be radically redesigned to transition from a one-way to a closed-loop system. The least this would mean is duplicating each and every water main to form the return. Hard to imagine this would be an inexpensive retrofit. Might make sense in a totally new water system - but how often do we get to do that?

 Inefficiency. Existing water systems mostly don't run deep enough to reach the deep-body temperature of the earth. In the North they generally run just below the frost line. Hold your hands under a cold running faucet in Minnesota in the winter and ask how much useful heat you can extract from that!

 Loss of system resilience. Far from reducing system freeze problems, taking heat from the circulating water during cold weather would substantially increase the likelihood of major pipe freeze, resulting in the potentially catastrophic loss of two critical utilities at the same time. No thank you.  

But yes, yes, yes for ground-loop geothermal, properly considered and implemented. The technology is well-established in principle but general implementation is yet in its infancy. I have no doubt that the current upfront costs quoted by Jon would in fact be substantially reduced if it were to become as widely adopted as he proposes.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Has no furnaces, just big windows and human body heat.  They even need ventilation to cool it down in winter!  That's heat storage.

Ahh well, Jon you need to look at the whole grid supply and demand and timing loads to meet supply.  By charging PHEV at the right time, peak demand is reduced.  From say charging them all at once.

You can only get power back out of PHEV batteries into the grid if the time they are needed for driving is preprogrammed into the system, so that there is enough time to charge up.  Faster charging batteries are an advantage for this, but is it even necessary?  I doubt it.

Heat/cold  storage (with geo heat exchange)is the high load busting, low cost storage solution for a renewable smart grid.  That's the big advantage over batteries or compressed air or pumped hydro storage.

"Existing water systems mostly don't run deep enough to reach the deep-body temperature of the earth."

Geo heat exchange does not need deep well ground heat that comes from the magma core.  It runs on the solar energy stored in the ground.  That 55% water is plenty warm enough to pump heat out of very efficiently.  

Is running loops back through a city water system more difficult than digging up everyone's yard who needs geo heat exchange?  High rise buildings do not even have yards.  You can drill to get the ground heat but that is very expensive.

Of course it would be worthwhile to drill down to say 90+ degree geo heat for heating cities if it is close enough to the surface.  I think that is the case with some cities.

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I suggest carbon caps to start with.  If you start funding these installations all over the country first, you'll drive down the cost of energy rather than remove coal plants.

The major problem is that of cost.  Solar is not cheap, and neither is drilling geothermal wells.  But if profit from carbon credits are used to fund financing for this, I can see it happening.

I say pay the homeowner who installs geo heat exchange heating or cooling 5 cents per kwh saved over the previous running average of the last few years.  That way the moving average eventually meets the present use, with conservation.

5 cents per kwh would pay out the most the first year, then as average use comes down less and less, until it equalized at the new lower energy use.  by then the savings plus the subsidy would pay off the system.  Giving the homeowner very cheap heat after that.  

Even better with solar pV to run the heat exchange system, with a 10 cent per kwh subsidy.  Free heat in a few years.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Sunlight is cheap.  PV is not cheap.

A passive solar home with insulated thermal mass is cheap and effective -- does not need geothermal exchange nor electric heat pumps.  Low-carbon district heating is also cheaper than geothermal heat pump retrofits.

I believe the original poster is off base on this one. It sounds like a college paper written from too late at night, cherry picking assumptions and skimming too wide a subject area to do it justice.

That said, I believe that drX is right on with his phase change salt storage method.  Having such material in an insulated reservoir near a building might be a much easier option than drilling 200-400 feet down at yes, the cost is near $15k.  My friend has an urban geothermal system and he did pay $20k, never sure if he'll see an actual cash recovery let alone in the 5 years quoted above in this blog.  

I thought of the phase-change storage media several years ago but was unable to identify one that was readily available, noncorrosive, nontoxic and had the desirable properties of changing phase, say, right near 65 degrees F.  With such a medium you would store excess heat all summer, and use it in the winter.  Let's identify one and bring it into commercial development soon!

Efficiency losses are the other achilles heel of this discussion. Every time you transfer, change or move energy you lose some.  Our buildings are not that well insulated yet either, unfortunately although Amory Lovins has shown us how to do it from scratch.  

I also don't believe there is sufficient geothermal energy in the top 400 feet to have a purely self-powered heat pump.  That would make its own pump power to move the heat for the buillding as well as power its own electricity needs.  Unless you are in Rejkyavik or Yellowstone Park.  Rube Goldberg devices, anyone?  Somehow we neet to tap a natural renewable source, probably the sun.

Urban micro-wind is definitely one part of the solution in my opinion. That term is not new, just maybe to this audience.  The OY Windside vertical axis turbines are most interesting to me due to the beauty and ruggedness, and lack of avian impact hazards.  But they are expensive, no? Economy of scale needed now.

The thing about harvesting all kinds of energy from the tap water supply and the sewer waste system only works if those systems can handle the use (I doubt it) and if the cooling or heating of those media don't impede the function.  I can affirm that right now, the tap water is da#m cold already at my building here in Ohio in February, you can't expect more energy out of a system than you put into it.

Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.

(except for the insulting stuff), I had never heard of salt storage, and micro-wind sounds interesting -- in fact, there is a lot of stuff that sounds interesting (two stuffs in one comment!), but the US government is too busy handing out billions to profit-rich oil companies and nuclear companies to spend a few pennies investigating these alternatives.

Considering that coal is horribly expensive when all of the externalities are factored in, it seems to me that even drilling all the holes needed for geothermal is well worth it, if cheap capital can be offered up front.  At this point, governments at all levels, apparently, are needed to provide that capital, and looked at from a society-wide basis, the return would be much greater than just the individual return -- again, because of the incredible external costs.

Remember, we're talking about alternative costs here, if it's not geothermal, what is it? coal? The other point, however, which BioD raised, is that we shouldn't be dismissing viable alternatives just because it will make it difficult to heat and cool a 3000 sq foot house.  The way our buildings are put together (and insulated) are a big part of the equation -- including big box stores and inefficient office buildings, remember, commercial use of electricity is almost as large as residential.

The home to be heated or cooled would have plastic heat tubing in the concrete, with the concrete insulated from the ground with rigid foam.  

For heating a heat pump would pick up 55 degree heat from the ground, with a loop of plastic pipe buried underground.  The ground pipe can be trenched in or drilled in.  

The heat pump elevates the heat to 90 degrees to heat water that circulates in the home's cement foundation plastic pipe.

For cooling in summer, water cooled in the ground loop circulates directly in the foundation loop.

So when the sun shines on pV panels on the roof, either the circulating pump for cooling or heat pump for heating, depending upon the season,the heat/cold is stored in the building foundation.

This storage effect can be enhanced for days worth of storage with phase change salt or frozen salt solution.  Cold can be stored in a freezer this way.

That's how geo heat exchange would actually store solar or wind power.  Anytime the wind blows or sun shines, heat/cold can be stored.  Drawing on already super efficient geo heat exchange.

It would replace coal.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Pv panels convert between 10% and 20% of sunlight falling on them into electricity. For less money per square foot, solar panels convert between 50% on 90% of the sunlight falling on them into low temperature heat. At least in heating climates, why not use direct solar heat instead of PV?

There is no reasons new buildings should not use passive techniques (a combination of efficiency and passive solar) to reduce total consumption (not just climate control) by 70% in commercial buildings and by 80%-90% in residential buildings.

that report seems somewhat flawed because he's just using standard economic arguments, and he just studied installations that were already installed, apparently in one area, not where they could be installed.  

The proper comparison is with all of the costs of coal, and within the a system-wide approach, which is what I hope we are groping for here -- particularly, by separating the energy needed for heating from the energy needed for machinery, we are more able to get a clear view of a way toward a sustainable energy system.  So, in the case of PV, the question is, what is a better way to power household equipment?  Maybe industrial equipment should be powered from solar thermal farms sited right next to the factory, maybe PV/small wind makes more sense for a residential/commercial building for equipment.  So the discussion should focus more on what functions we are trying to fulfill, no?

I liked that the paper suggested pv subsidies would be better spent on R&D.

It is not a choice between coal and pv, especially in California.  Coal is not a viable choice.  

I saw no mention of the potential cost increase of pv with a carbon cost of $150+ per ton.  The study was limited to CA climate.  Nonetheless, the NPV of PV does not pencil out unless the application is off grid.

Cogeneration of heat for hot water from the PV panels would be great. And whole home solar heating from the panels directly and passive solar.

Would this replace coal alone?  Probably not because not all homes or regions are suitable for passive or active solar or PV.  

In these cases geo heat exchange heating/cooling is the best option.  And these homes or buildings can still store heat from solar and wind coming onto the grid from other home solar pV and wind farms.

I'm advocating it all be used together in a smart grid, where homes like Lovins' supply their own heat plus extra power back to the grid... to be stored by other homes by capturing geo heat exchange heat or cold.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I really think it will be easy.  Just stick to the subsidy point.  The simple solution, money to homeowners to help pay off their investment in solar and geo heat exchange conservation.

No middle men, no traders, no power company deciding how much to give the customer and how much to keep from the subsidy.  Most power companies simply keep the subsidy from RPC and only offset for customers who generate solar or wind kwh for the grid.

They don't actually pay when a customer generates extra power.  They essentially steal it, and take the 12 cents per kwh or whatever RPC amounts to for themselves.

In New Jersey they let customers sell creidts on the open market.  It amounted to around 20 cents per kwh!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Nice article Jon. I like this site because it is positive and solutions oriented. I'll try to set the record straight on geothermal heat exchangers from the managed water supply. These comments prompted me, sorry spacesaver, all three points you make are not accurate. Geothermal HVAC from the managed water supply is the most efficient form of geothermal exchange there is. It is also the least expensive. The climate has no bearing, nor the existing water infrastructure. The process is extraction of the thermal properties of the water and returning it to the line. You don't actually use the water itself. Pressurized grey water, reuse water is the same process. Their is no loss of system resilience. The only limitations on grey water geothermal is all the states don't recycle water yet. CA,HI,NY,WA,NV,TX,CO,AZ all have pressurized grey water lines installed. And there is plenty of heat in Minnesota's pipes to be extracted, these systems are installed in extreme climates already, some of them back in 1983 are still there, operating as expected.

Brian  

It's great to get real world experience here with these technologies no one seems to hear about.

What about the possibility of using water supply systems as a heat pump source (buffered by a separate loop of course) for heating and just direct circulation of a heat transfer fluid for cooling and dehumidifying.

Mabye heat wells drilled into the ground that loops of pipe go down into could boost the heat transfer from the ground as more and more building started using the heat (or cold) from the water system?

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Yes that is possible, If I understand you correctly, however the current way the water is cooled again is just through a cooling tower before it is returned to the line.
In the very near future I'll post an even more excitng addition to geothermal from the managed water supply, very interesting, and no doubt will be the choice, the obvious, the future of geothermal exchange on a large scale, supported by a huge infrastructure. A natural fit(support) for what we are already doing.
Regards

Pardon my skepticism but I'm always ready to be convinced. How do you extract usable heat from 40° water (at least that's how I remember the cold water faucet in a Minnesota winter) without risking freezing it in the pipe? And if there are working systems in place how about some links?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

although you're talking about a subset of what are referred to in the statistics as "commercial" buildings.  We still have to worry about residential and industrial buildings, as well as stores (ok, unless shopping is mostly on-line, mr.soa)