Our English-speaking friends in Australia and the United Kingdom are getting in on the geothermal energy craze. Let’s start with Australia first.
In Victoria Australia the first geothermal energy plant will go live in around three years. The new geothermal plant will provide enough energy to power 120,000 homes. Before the geothermal plant is built however a study will need to be conducted.
The study will have to find out whether or not the average underground temperature is 150° or more. This will dictate whether or not the geothermal plant will be built. Once this has been decided, then a 12 MW geothermal pilot plant will be built. After this has been demonstrated to be viable then the main geothermal power plant will be built.
Meanwhile in the UK 320,000 homes may get ground source heat pumps in order to provide energy. This type of geothermal energy can produce 30% of the energy of the United Kingdom by the year 2020.
Right now there are about 8,000 heat pumps installed in the UK. But that number is expected to increase dramatically by 2012. The British government has said that they will be giving businesses and homeowners incentives for using geothermal energy instead of gas or electricity.
While we’re on the subject of energy efficiency for homes, we must talk about geothermal energy to supply power for earth homes. This category of home includes underground homes, earth berm homes and earth sheltered homes.
Now just imagine these earth homes being powered by wind, solar or geothermal energy and what huge savings that will be. In fact your earth home could become a power generating station and you could sell your electricity back to the power company. How cool would that be? Both literally and figuratively, how cool would that be?