Residents, companies, and government agencies in the Philadelphia area are turning from natural gas to geothermal energy to heat and cool their houses and buildings, and one historic structure has had a particularly favorable transition.
The German Society of Pennsylvania, which owns a 195-year-old building, chose to forgo a traditional heating and air conditioning overhaul in favor of the renewable energy source eight years ago, the WHYY News Climate Desk reported.
The 20,000-square-foot Victorian structure has a library, built in 1888, with books that are hundreds of years old and require a consistent temperature.
The geothermal system responsible for their upkeep uses closed-loop pipes that go 500 feet into the ground, penetrating bedrock that remains at 55 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. Two pumps circulate water in the pipes until it matches that temperature. It then powers a heat pump, which can also cool the building in summer since it works by moving heat — like a refrigerator, all per WHYY.
"We had a steam heating system for parts of the building," Tony Michels, GSP vice president of operations, told the outlet. "We had a hot water system, we had split units, window units, you name it, we had fireplaces. We had everything you can imagine, and we eliminated all of that."
Michels said all that was expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment, contributing heat-trapping pollution to the atmosphere. The $1.4 million clean energy project cut the group's gas bill from $1,200 each month to $63.
"It was a no-brainer," Michels told WHYY. "We are basically storing the energy that we take out of this building in the summer and re-extract the energy in the winter to heat the building."
Homeowners, the Ronald McDonald House, the police academy, and Stockton University in New Jersey are examples of others in the area to make the switch, the outlet reported.
Geothermal energy is not practical or available everywhere, but it is making an impact in the Northeast. A Massachusetts utility, for example, has commissioned the country's first geothermal neighborhood. In Illinois, researchers worked on repurposing oil and gas wells as geothermal energy storage systems.
Developments in the industry are myriad, including tapping into a Colorado reservoir thousands of feet beneath Earth's surface and a drilling breakthrough that cuts boring times by 70%. Two-thirds of Iceland's power production comes from geothermal energy.
You can join the green transition — and see how your savings stack up against the German Society's — by installing a heat pump or solar panels or making other energy upgrades.
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