What Are The Environmental Benefits Of Geothermal Power?
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by: GeorgeKhan | Total views: 17 | Word Count: 639
The environmental benefits that you get from geothermal power, which comes from the latent heat present in the Earth, are really the same as you get with all other forms of renewable energy. We'll be focusing on how geothermal energy is used in ground source heat pumps though, but will also touch on the power plants that use this form of energy as well.
Geothermal Power Stations
While ground source heat pumps will be the main focus then, to start with we'll have a look at the geothermal power stations that are available. The reason that they are not very common is that they are more costly to build than other forms of renewable energy systems. Some places do have the right conditions for them to be an efficient use of resources though.
In terms of the way that power stations like this work, it is very similar to how conventional power stations work. That is, there are turbines which are caused to spin by steam which is rising from hot water. The difference comes in the way that the water is heated. With geothermal energy that heat comes from the ground, whereas conventionally it comes from burning fossil fuels.
If you're interested in creating electricity on your property then this is clearly not going to be a suitable way of doing it as it requires such a lot of space and equipment. In fact if that is what you want then the best thing to do is to make use of solar energy by getting PV solar panels.
It doesn't matter where the electricity is produced though as to the environmental benefits. So all of the electricity that is created by geothermal plants is still going to help the environment as it reduces the amount of energy that has to come from burning fossil fuels. And that's a problem because of the effects of climate change of course.
The Problem Of Global Warming
The problem of global warming has come about due to the large amounts of CO2 that we are releasing in to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas so the more that we let in to the atmosphere the warmer the Earth will become. Actually it's a bit more complicated than that, but effectively that is the case.
Unfortunately though we are currently too dependent on fossil fuels to be able to stop using it without an alternative being in place to take over. If we did just go cold turkey then we would have a worldwide economic collapse that there would be no recovering from and many people would die.
Of course it's not just electricity that we need to generate from a renewable source. It's also the heat that we use to provide our homes with hot water and central heating. One of the ways that this can be done is by using ground source heat pumps.
Heat Pumps
The way that ground source heat pumps can help is by fulfilling many of your hot water and central heating needs. So you get the heat that is present in the ground, and have it transferred to your home to take care of your heating. That's geothermal power.
Unfortunately this does not mean that you're not going to need your regular boiler at all anymore. That is still going to be necessary to increase the heat that comes from the heat pumps, but it's not going to need as much energy to do that because the heat pump will already have heated it up a fair bit.
Electricity is still needed to get the heat pumps working of course. However you get out more heat energy than the electrical energy that you have to put in. In fact usually it's 3 to 5 times more. A boiler would have to be 300-500% efficient to achieve this, and that of course is impossible.
About the Author
If you'd be interested in learning more about heat pumps, you can do so at Geothermal Power, which is where Alfie Russell has written more on this subject. This is also the place to go should you have an interest in getting a free estimate for an installation.
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