:: Comparison of Costs

With Geothermal energy the saving is considerable and this makes it possible to recover the initial investment. We give an example below to show the savings that are possible:



    EXAMPLE CALCULATION


Let us take the example of a camp-site with 30 showers that consume 25 litres/minute for an average of 2 hours per day. The water needs to be heated from 15ľ C to 45 ľC. It is a circuit with instant hot water, with no accumulator tank, thus complying with RITE.

Total consumption: 90000 litres per day.

Hourly consumption (over 12 hours): 7500 litres per hour.

Heat required to heat 1 litre of water from 15° to 45°

Q = Ce * (Tf – Ti) = 1 * (45 -15) = 30 Kcal/litre.

Therefore each hour represents: 7500 * 30 = 225000 Kcal/hour = 261 kW.

For this power of 305 kW we can compare the consumption of different types of energy. The geothermal heat pump has a COP (coefficient of performance) of between 3 and 5 (in the example the COP = 3). In other words, supplying one watt of electricity gives us between 3 and 5 watts of heat. On the other hand, with the other energies compared here it will be difficult for the performance to exceed 90%.