Home Energy Make Over

Archaeological evidence establishes that the beginning of man’s application of geothermal energy in North America came about more than ten thousand years ago with the settlements of Paleo-Indians at natural geothermal energy springs. The natural geothermal energy springs functioned as a reservoir of geothermal energy for heat and purifying, using their minerals as a source of therapeutic healing.

Although people still soak in shallow pools heated from the Earths core, technologists are creating technologies that will permit us to examine areas more than ten miles beneath the Earth’s surface hunting for geothermal energy. Currently in the United States Geothermal Energy accounts for 0.3 percent of power though experts predict this could rise to as much as 10% by 2050.

Geothermal Energy is heat (thermal) retrieved from the sub terrain depths of the land. The thermal energy held in in the rock of the earth and liquid (that occupies the cracks and pores inside the rock) in the earth’s crust.

Scientific calculations determine that the earth, starting from an entirely molten state, must have cooled off and become entirely solid several thousand years ago without an energy stimulant in addition to that of the sun. It is thought that the elemental source of geothermal energy is radioactive decay occurring deep within the earth (Burkland, 1973).  Read more...

Most people would prefer the common heating and ventilation devices and air conditioning units, merely because most are not familiar with the geothermal heat pump.  The geothermal heat pump is an effective way of heat absorption during the wintertime. These heat pumps or usually called geoexchange devices have been around for almost 70 years. Unknown to most people, but the geothermal heat pump is highly efficient in heat producing and in energy saving. The reason why geothermal heat pumps save more energy and are more efficient than HVAC units is because these heat pumps use the earth heat and convert it into a source of energy.
 
A geothermal heat pump is highly efficient for the coldest winters. These devices can warm a cold room to cooling the temperature during summertime. The reason is because a geothermal heat pump garners heat or absorbs heat from the within the earth where the temperature is always constant unlike that about the ground which varies, which enables it to produce warmer air during winter and cooler air during the summer and without circulating the air like air conditioners. Using the constant temperature allows the geothermal heat pump to produce higher efficiencies from 300 percent to 600 percent efficiency. When comparing these percentages to the normal heating, ventilating or air conditioning devices, would only amount to 175 percent to 250 percent efficiency.
 
Geothermal heat pumps can be enhanced to heat and cool a house depending on the tubes installed. Geothermal heat pumps near bodies of water can act as a heater and a cooler when programmed. Most of these heaters actually release air according to the room temperature.  Read more...

Today we are at such a crossroad that we have to seriously think about our future and about the sustainability of our resources and most importantly the quality of life that we are living and would be leaving for our future generations. This is because our scarce resources are being used indiscriminately and this is nowhere more apparent than in the energy sector. Here we have seen that the indiscriminate and overuse of the fossil fuels have not only started the scarcity, but also has led to environmental pollution and adverse environmental changes like the depletion of the ozone layers. Thus there is an urgent need to tap other resources that are sustainable and at the same time eco-friendly and hence a new term Green Energy has been coined.

At present research is going on tap natural resources like the wind, the sun, the water and even the heat of the core of the earth. These sources are very good sources for Green Energy as they are present in abundance, are sustainable, are renewable and cause very less pollution.  Read more...