Your choices so far:
1 Geothermal; 2 Comfortable indoor climate
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | 2 Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| 1 Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | Fuel: Liquid | Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
In case the supply of a comfortable indoor climate is the main purpose of the energy supply system and the source is geothermal energy, there will be two major system solutions to choose between:
- The first alternative is to equip each individual building with its own heat pump and its own geothermal well.
- The second alternative is to set up a central heat pump unit and then see to that the energy required for climate control can be distributed to the individual houses.
The first system suffers from the limitation that if geothermal wells are too close, and unless the geothermal source is a dynamic aquifer, the wells will interact thermally and one well will cool down the neighbouring well. In sparsely populated areas this is not a problem, but in more densely populated areas it may well be.
The second alternative is what is generally known as a district heating system.