Google's New Startup Heats Your Home With Energy From Your Lawn (cnn.com)

WindBourne shares an article about Google's plans for "an extremely cheap form of HVAC." CNN reports: A new startup called Dandelion, born from the secretive and futuristic lab "X" of Google's parent company Alphabet, says it will offer affordable geothermal heating and cooling systems to homeowners. Existing systems are typically expensive with big upfront installation fees, discouraging homeowners from adopting the technology... Installing the pipes -- called "ground loops" -- under someone's lawn is a traditionally invasive, messy process. It involves using wide drills that dig wells more than 1,000 feet underground. Dandelion's drill is fast and lean, allowing for only one or two deep holes a few inches wide. The system will cost between $20,000 and $25,000, compared to conventional systems priced as high as $60,000.

Geothermal systems are better for the environment because they significantly cut down on carbon dioxide emissions... Buildings are responsible for 39% of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Green Building Council. Most of these emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels to provide the building with heating, cooling and lighting, and to power appliances and electrical equipment.
Google has been studying the potential of geothermal energy since 2011. Dandelion will eventually partner with local companies to handle installations -- and is already accepting sign-ups from customers in New York.

Comments

No

[Richard_at_work]

No, not a start-up, a new subsidiary. Stop misusing terms - this has the full backing of Google as a throwaway corporation, it's not five people in a bedroom with a great idea struggling to pay their bills.

Re: No

[Ol Olsoc]

1. Figure out how much one spends on energy now. 2. Figure out how much one would spend after the system is installed. 3. Divide savings into the cost of the system to determine how many years it will take to recover the investment.

Those are the basic numbers. But I've found that there is a humongous wild card in there.

We exchanged oil heat for a super-efficient gas furnace (extracts so much of the energy that the chimney is made of PVC)

Then oil prices went nuts. Ended up recovering the gas furnace expenses in a couple years.

This was a real eye-opener for me, because my calculations were simply blown out of the water. But I hadn't accounted for the volatility of the fuel source.

So depending on how you heat/cool, and it's pretty much a given that oil prices aren't going anywhere but up beyond inflation over the long term, the recovery period is difficult to calculate. As well, what is the "payback" time on a standard efficiency oil furnace or a standard compressor AC unit.

I think it is a better approach to look towards efficiency, and likewise look into devices/methods that require as little replacement as possible, because that is another variable that adds cost that messes badly with the calculations.

Then there is incidental expenses. As another example, we dug up the old buried oil tank, and it was perilously close to leaking. If it had leaked into the surrounding soil and water table, the mitigation costs to me would have been around the entire value of the house. There's a reason new Oil tanks have to be double walled and above ground in my area. I could have opted to leave the tank in the ground to save money. Yikes! In a rare moment of intelligence I decided to pull it out, and thank goodness I did.

Ground source heat pumps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that they don't actually mean geothermal in the Icelandic sense but in the "hey, let's use the thermal mass of the earth as the heat reservoir for a heat-pump", where "heat-pump" is basically a reversible air-conditioner (it can move heat in either direction). Most air conditioners use the outside air as the heat resevoir, which is is not terribly good during summer if you're trying to cool. The earth a few feet down soon goes to a relatively constant temperature.

The problem with ground-source is avoiding locallized heating/cooling in the ground. You either need very heat-conductive ground or lots of contact space.

Of course, you can also do the same thing with a body of water that doesn't freeze in the winter or get too hot in the summer.

Re:Ground source heat pumps?

[cheesybagel]

Yeah a ground source heatsink is typically a lot more efficient than just a regular air conditioner with a fan using the atmosphere as the heatsink. Plus it also make it possible to heat buildings to room temperature even in cold places like, say, Sweden. I am kinda of curious about the efficiency of Google's proposed solution though. It is not like I haven't heard of people drilling for aquifers before and their solution seems kinda similar.

Re:Ground source heat pumps?

[anegg]

Ground source heat pumps have been around in the United States for many years (https://igshpa.org/). I first looked at them in 1996 when I was planning to build a new house, and I looked at them again in 2007 when I needed to replace my failing air source heat pumps that could not be repaired in place because federal energy guidelines had killed the sale of the replacement parts I needed for my 7 year old system. I ended up going with the ground source heat pump to see how it would all work out.

It's a cool idea (no pun intended) and it works, but has its challenges. The contractors are somewhat specialized, as are the equipment vendors (I used Water Furnace equipment http://www.waterfurnace.com/). Similar to air source heat pumps, you have to accept a slower rate of change in your indoor temperature (i.e., you don't get the "ahhh" rapid heat like you do with a fossil-fuel force hot air furnace and you don't seem to get any measurable benefit from cutting back temperatures when you aren't home; I suspect that this is in part due to the challenge of heating/cooling the large thermal mass of your home with a smaller difference in the air temperature).

It is a huge advantage over air source heat pumps when temperatures fall below freezing; the ground temperature in my area was about 56 degrees F and its a lot easier to pull heat out of liquid at 56 degrees F than air at sub-freezing temperatures; same kind of benefit when cooling in the summer with outside temps in the 90s or 100s. Its a lot quieter than air source heat pumps because you don't have the noisy outside units running just outside your house.

Its worth looking at and I didn't regret doing it, but take all of the projected savings and especially any claims of "increased equity" in your home with a grain of salt. It was the soft benefits that sold it for me. Oh - to maximize efficiency when cooling and save yourself a few bucks, get an option for domestic hot water... in the summer the heat pump can exchange heat into your hot water reservoir first before dumping it into the ground. Free hot showers (yes, I like my hot showers, even in the summer).

Insulation is a better option

[geoff_syndicate]

What's the point of heating if it goes straight out a poorly insulated wall or roof? Follow the passive house standard and you won't even need extra heating.

Re:Insulation is a better option

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's actually the advice (honest) installers here will give you: insulate walls, roof, floor, and get that triple glazing filled with unicorn farts first, before spending money on a geothermal system. It's more cost-effective. But depending on your climate, you're still likely to need heating and/or cooling.

Still it's good news if they can really cut costs for such a system by that much. If you don't have natural gas (and that's the way we're going here), geothermal heating is by far the best option.

I have a startup that does something similar:

[Anonymous Coward]

What we do is we create rectangular holes in your house, then we put glass in the holes, and then you can use the heat from the sun to heat up your house!

We have already been granted a patent for this, back in 2007, and it is called "Windows 9". We have also sued everyone that has infringed upon our patent, including Microsoft. Ever wonder why there wasn't a Windows version 9?

Now you know.

What they don't tell you in the article

[grungeman]

is that this only makes sense for very wll insulated housed. The efficiency of heat pump systems decreases with the output temperature. In old houses you need a high output temperature due to all the heat loss, which means that the efficiency is low. For well insulated houses a much lower output temperature is necessary, so not only is there less energy required for heating, it is also produced much more efficiently.

We have a ground heat pump installed in our house (which was built seven years ago). There are three holes, each 90m deep. The heat pump is of course driven by electricity, which then extracts about 3 to four times the heat energy from the ground. Basically you can think of it as an amplified electric heating. Installation cost is relatively high (especially compared to gas heating), but running costs are much lower.

And it would be a great system to store excess solar or wind energy, provided that large enough tanks for the heated water are installed.

A bit steep IMO

[nospam007]

In Europe such systems are much more common and prices much lower than the ones proposed here.
I included a link (in German) where such systems cost between 10 and 12000€ for a system getting the heat out of the air, out of the soil or out from the ground water.
The latter depending on local regulations, since it's impossible for everyone in a street to cool down the ground water, so they have to be a bit more apart, usually around 300 Meters.

http://www.erdwaermepumpe.de/k...

Re: Energy From Your Lawn!

[ClickOnThis]

There'll be a free option if you let Google use your lawn to display ads. It'll be called ... [sunglasses] ... Google Grass.