![]() | DrumBeat: February 7, 2008 | The Oil Drum | A Vision Splendid or Selective Myopia: Exploiting the Australia 2020 Summit | ![]() |
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GAIA Host Collective
That is a nice project, but it requires a new development with district heating. I think that an individual home could to something similar with a ground source heat pump and solar thermal collectors.
During the summer, the hot water is circulated down into the ground heating the soil and storing the energy. During the winter months, when it is cloudy and you can not use solar thermal heating, you can draw from the heat stored in the ground to heat the home using the heat pump.
Even without solar collectors, ground-source heat pumps store and reuse energy. When cooling the house for the summer, heat is rejected to the ground. When winter comes, that heat can be extracted from the ground to heat the house. As spring approaches, the ground has been cooled after the witner and is thus is a more efficient medium for cooling the house.
Retsel
Yes, however many places in the U.S. do not require much AC in the summer but require a lot of heating in the winter. Storing a lot of heat in the summer from solar thermal collectors can provide a lot of heat in the winter, saving lots of energy and money.