From Airports to Elementary Schools, New Examples of Geothermal Heating & Cooling Sites Emerge

5 New Case Studies Add to Database of Geothermal Systems Installed Across the Nation

By Becca Sweet, NLR

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Geothermal (OG) has published five new case studies on a variety of geothermal heating and cooling applications. These case studies, researched and written by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) in cooperation with the sites, add to the existing database of geothermal heat pump (GHP) case studies, which now includes more than 20 examples from across the United States.

Subsurface temperatures are warmer than the surface air during winter and cooler than the air during summer in most places across the United States. GHPs can leverage these relatively consistent subsurface temperatures to heat and cool both individual buildings and large, networked complexes.

The newly published case studies include the following:

• The Town at Trilith outside of Fayetteville, Georgia, is one of the largest geothermal residential communities in the United States, complete with 750 homes heated and cooled by individual geothermal systems.
• Spring Mills Primary School is one of 10 schools in the Berkeley County School District in West Virginia that was upgraded to GHP systems for heating and cooling. Energy use across the 10 schools has been reduced by 75% since implementation.
• At the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, geothermal wells 500 feet below the airfield support a system that heats and cools the entire Jerry E. Abramson Terminal and is anticipated to save $400,000 per year in energy costs.
• Central New Mexico Community College uses GHPs to regulate temperatures in three different buildings on the 61,400-square-foot Rio Rancho Campus, where utility costs have been cut by 48%.
• A second location of Uptown Grocery in Oklahoma City, which was built to include a GHP, has seen 33% lower utility bills than the company’s first grocery store built without a GHP system.

While none of the featured systems are funded by OG, they provide examples of use cases for GHPs. For webpages and printable versions of each site, visit the Geothermal Heat Pump Case Studies.