Ground source heating and cooling can be done almost anywhere in the United States. It is used for heating and air conditioning a building using a geothermal heat pump, a highly efficient renewable energy technology that takes advantage of the constant temperature of the earth beneath the surface.

Geothermal power is electricity generated from heat and steam stored underground. Although currently available only in the Western United States and Hawaii, it is considered one of the most environmentally-friendly and cost-effective energy solutions over the long run. Research, however, is rapidly extending the reach of the technology - Enhanced Geothermal Systems include a variety of techniques designed to work around current limitations and make geothermal power production available to every state in the nation.

Ground Source Heating and Cooling
Geothermal pumps, also called ground source heat pumps, extract heat from the ground and transfer it to your facility in the winter, while extracting heat from your facility in the summer and transferring it to the ground. In other words, the ground acts as a heat source in winter and a heat sink in summer.

Geothermal facts & benefits: Geothermal heat is highly efficient, reliable, and available 24 hours a day. Ground source heat is used to manage both air and water temperature in your building. Geothermal systems require only a small amount of electricity to exchange heat with the earth, saving you money each month on your utility bills. Sometimes the system goes only as deep as below the frost line. When a well is used, the well for this geothermal energy usually go down in the hundreds rather than thousands of feet. When combined with a solar or wind powered complementary source of power, your heating system can be entirely carbon neutral. To optimize the operation efficiency, it is critical that the system be properly designed.		Available products and features: Any subset of these designs and equipment can be folded into one convenient lease. Multi-stage design Multi-zone design Trenches, lake systems, or wells Variable air volume Twinned and tripled air handlers Heat pumps Compressors and dual compressors Desuperheaters Massively over-sized desuperheaters (water heaters) Over-sized heat exchangers Floating head pressure controls Oil separators Receivers

A ground source well can provide geothermal heating and cooling to more than one building. In Cambridge, a ground source heat pump system in three 1200-foot deep wells provides all heating and cooling for a large municipal annex. There is no boiler or furnace in the building. Imagine that in your administration building!

Geothermal Power Plants
At a geothermal plant, steam produced in naturally occurring underground reservoirs is brought to the surface where it drives turbines to produce electricity. Available 24 hours a day, this important renewable resource poses none of the grid integration challenges of other renewables.

Until now, geothermal energy has been limited by having to find three essentials ingredients in one place naturally: hot rock relatively close to the surface, water, and cracks in the rock that serve as a reservoir.

Those limitations go away if engineers can tame a technology known as EGS, for Enhanced Geothermal Systems. One form of EGS involves drilling thousands of feet down to reach hot rock, pumping water down to fracture the rock to create reservoirs, then sending down water that will come back up another well as hot water or steam that can spin a turbine to generate electricity.

Manufacturers / Products / Links

Calpine is the largest producer of geothermal energy in North America. Calpine's renewable energy products can help your organization provide environmentally friendly, renewable energy to your customers, meet a regulatory mandate, or simply add environmental value to your operations.

Power Purchase Agreements
Power Purchase Agreements are contracts between two parties, one who generates electricity for the purpose of sale (the seller) and one who is looking to purchase electricity (the buyer). More commonly they are used for solar projects, but they are growing in popularity for wind and geothermal power. Customers pay at long term rates only for the power generated by the facility - not the equipment or installation - greatly reducing the risk and complications of implementing the technology on their own.

With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 the renewable energy investment tax credit can be combined with tax exempt financing, significantly reducing the capital required to develop a renewable energy project.

The term of a PPA generally lasts between 5 and 25 years. In some renewable energy contracts, the host has the option to purchase the generating equipment from the PPA provider at the end of the term, may renew the contract with different terms, or can request that the equipment be removed. One of the key benefits of the PPA is that the electricity (i.e. money) the system produces can be used for raising the money required to install it.

The stable, even heat of the earth is a reliable source of power that can provide heat, air-conditioning, hot water, and even electricity to your municipal building or complex.

Putting in a ground source heat system will save you money and make your municipality less reliant on fossil fuels.

If you have access to the right geologic formation in your municipality, you can also create a geothermal power plant today. The latest research shows that the ability to make electricity from geothermic power will reach all states in the near future.

Install a Geothermal Ground Source System for Heating and Air Conditioning

Geothermal power can run or supplement the heat and air-conditioning systems in the smallest of municipal building to the largest:

• Small, remote fire houses
• Libraries
• Police stations
• Courthouses
• Schools
• Colleges and universities
• Maintenance buildings
• Administration buildings

The system includes an outdoor condenser unit, an indoor heat pump, and an external buried closed loop full of refrigerant or anti-freeze fluid. The system draws heat from the ground during the winter and from the indoor air during the summer.

Ground Source Hot Water System
For water heating, you can add a desuperheater to a geothermal heat pump system. A desuperheater is an auxiliary heat exchanger that uses superheated gases from the heat pump's compressor to heat water. This hot water then circulates into the buildings hot water system.

Use Geothermal Electricity
You can make geothermal sourced electricity: If you meet the location restrictions that currently exist, you can build a geothermal plant. Keep up to date with changes in the research, however, as EGS is rapidly removing that geographic restriction. A geothermal plant might be in your future soon.

You can buy geothermal electricity: The electricity industry is changing. At least 50% of customers have the option to purchase renewable electricity directly from their power supplier through a Power Purchase Agreement, and all customers have the option of purchasing renewable energy certificates. Such power is sometimes referred to as "green power" or "clean power."

Geothermal and gasification energy installations offers a number of benefits:

• Geothermal heat is highly efficient.
  The geothermal system is highly efficient because for every unit of electrical energy used to run the compressor and pumps, the geothermal system can extract and upgrade 2 to 3 units of heat energy from the ground. Therefore the homeowner receives 3 to 4 units of heat for each energy unit put in, which makes the geothermal system 300 to 400 percent more efficient than baseboard electric heating
• Tax incentives and Rebates may be available. Many states, including New York State, offer tax incentives as well. And because these systems decrease the burden on the grid in times of peak demand, many utility companies offer rebates.
• Positive impact on your balance sheet. With MLC lease financing for your energy project, you have no capital investment and you can get your project started now and reap all of the cost-savings benefits. This makes sense because you can make better use of your capital for other important needs.
• Reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The United States generates an average of 15 billion kilowatt hours of geothermal power per year, comparable to burning some 25 million barrels (4,000,000 m3) of oil or 6 million short tons of coal per year.
• Low maintenance. Geothermal systems have fewer mechanical components, making to failure. The ground loop has an expected life of over 50 years and requires little to no maintenance.
• Proven, reliable technology. Ground source heat pumps last longer than conventional systems because they are protected from the harsh outdoor weather. The heat pump unit is housed indoors and the loop is underground.
• Excellent incentives are still available! Refer to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency (DSIRE) for the latest complete information on local, state, regional, and federal incentives. $61.9 million of Recovery Act money has been directed to cost-sharing geothermal projects in schools, hospitals, government and commercial buildings in an effort "to show the economic feasibility of ground-source heat pumps
• Cleaner, fuel efficient technology. Geothermal and gasification energy installations offer wonderful benefits — primarily offsetting your energy cost needs. You will save money while helping to conserve energy and improve the environment.  Your site consumes less carbon and your building may earn LEED credits.
• MLC will fastrack your equipment lease to get your project up and running in no time.
  Our energy performance audit and contract partners can perform an assessment of your current systems against your usage needs. Then MLC secures the lease financing to fund your project quickly. The MLC team also provides the professional assistance you need to navigate regulations or restrictions, and help you make the most of local, state and federal incentives. Which means you get all of the benefits, and none of the hassles!