41–50 of 62 posts
Feels like a bit of 'jump the shark' moment for google...a geothermal heat pump called dandelion from an advertising and search company. Does it connect to nest and phone home information about our homes?
Ground Source (geothermal) heat pumps are not new, but Dandelion is doing interesting/innovative things. Here is my understanding from keeping track of what they're up to for a little while. First they've developed a new drilling rig to try and drop the drilling time, cost and mess by 10x. Call the drilling traditionally 50% of the cost. This is for doing vertical bore holes, instead of horizontal trenches. Second, t…
Unfortunately, it's still not all that different from traditional geothermal with a "Google" sticker on it for me to really consider it innovative.
The problem is its initial target market: The Hudson Valley. Since Dandelion is based in NYC, it makes sense. But it will only really benefit on the heating side. I've owned several homes in the Hudson Valley (Middletown, Saugerties, Goshen) and yes they used heating oil in the winter, but no -- none of them had air conditioning. Unless something has changed in the last 10 years, residential AC isn't exactly widespread in homes over 10 years old, and (last I was there) electric was displacing heating oil in new construction.
New house, floor heating, 150 m2, 4 persons.
A B C
price installed € 3500 10500 13500
kWh/year ....... 16000 8000 4000
COP-estimate .... 1,0 2,0 4,0
cost per year € 2080 1040 520
saving per year € - 1040 1560
payback difference - 7 y 6 y
Ground Source (geothermal) heat pumps are not new, but Dandelion is doing interesting/innovative things. Here is my understanding from keeping track of what they're up to for a little while. First they've developed a new drilling rig to try and drop the drilling time, cost and mess by 10x. Call the drilling traditionally 50% of the cost. This is for doing vertical bore holes, instead of horizontal trenches. Second, t…
Is there some way to see what data they collect/ provide? My client has been providing insight into geothermal installs for 4-5 years now: http://groundenergysupport.com/wp/ -- still the most fulfilling thing I ever built.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that is what they say (without telling anything about the actual drilling method). A typical water well drilling machine is on the back of a large truck and will bore a 30-40 cm hole for (prices here in Europe) 80-90 €/m. There are smaller drill rigs (nothing that actually needs to be invented, only "normal" micropiling rigs) that can bore 10-20 cm diameter holes for a price of 60-70 Euro/m. Let's say you need…
Does it really need to go 80m deep? Seems like a very deep hole They're probably looking at a width of 10cm tops from their description.
As well the diameter of the bored hole implies a given diameter of the inner pipes, and they have obviously different thermal exchange capacity, though you can use smaller pipes using higher pressure in them.
Here there are some "generic" references (it is the site of an Italian firm that builds geothermal inverters, their English could be bettered):
http://en.rossatogroup.com/guide/pompe-di-calore/pompe-di-ca...
Misprint? Commonly available ground source systems can save upto 75%. That's way ahead of the article's claimed 20%. At 20% it's simply not worth the cost of installation. Dandelion's website won't load to let me check.
See the graphic at the top here:
https://dandelionenergy.com/much-money-will-i-save-poughkeep...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious how much this affects the price. I'm not a homeowner any more, but when I was, I longed to replace my furnace with a ground-source heat pump. It is not too much of an efficiency win over gas for heating, especially since we used little heat, but it's great for cooling. But I was really put off by the price. There was no way to justify it even under the most pessimistic assumptions about energy prices, exc…
I think cost is the biggest issue. If you want to reduce heating and cooling costs via investments then insulation + solar can cheaply make a huge difference. Ground source scales well if you have a large building and a large body of water near by then the payback time is short. But at single family home level it's just not that useful.
There is a way: open-loop systems.
A few years ago we installed an open-loop ground source heat pump (ClimateMaster brand) for under $6k. Water at 50F is drawn from a preexisting 15 gpm/50 foot well, through the heat pump unit, then dumped in a dry well at around 40F. It uses half a million gallons of water a year (costing We homeowner installed, so we weren't eligible for NYS incentives. But it cut our annual bill in half vs. the previous heating oil furnace, with a payback period of 5-8 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think cost is the biggest issue. If you want to reduce heating and cooling costs via investments then insulation + solar can cheaply make a huge difference. Ground source scales well if you have a large building and a large body of water near by then the payback time is short. But at single family home level it's just not that useful.
> Ground source scales well if you have a large building and a large body of water near by then the payback time is short. But at single family home level it's just not that useful. There is a way: open-loop systems. A few years ago we installed an open-loop ground source heat pump (ClimateMaster brand) for under $6k. Water at 50F is drawn from a preexisting 15 gpm/50 foot well, through the heat pump unit, then dumpe…
Relative net savings depend on getting a system sized for your use, and how much cooling you use in the summer. But, you can also add solar panels for summer use with the overall value balancing over the year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think cost is the biggest issue. If you want to reduce heating and cooling costs via investments then insulation + solar can cheaply make a huge difference. Ground source scales well if you have a large building and a large body of water near by then the payback time is short. But at single family home level it's just not that useful.
That's not what my analysis showed. It has a payback period of 5-10 years depending on your assumptions, assuming new construction. Shorter period the more extreme the climate, longer in places like Norcal. Retrofitting though is a different story (higher cost -> longer payback).
Further south solar systems have below your 5-10 year payback period.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dandelion uses a cheaper drilling method to reduce up-front costs. https://blog.x.company/introducing-dandelion-2706eded169a
I'm curious how much this affects the price. I'm not a homeowner any more, but when I was, I longed to replace my furnace with a ground-source heat pump. It is not too much of an efficiency win over gas for heating, especially since we used little heat, but it's great for cooling. But I was really put off by the price. There was no way to justify it even under the most pessimistic assumptions about energy prices, exc…
It's basically "free" if your house needs a well anyway. (this assumes a lot about the ground under your house but it's relatively true ;P)
If you live in a mild climate, you are just not going see a lot of payback because as you said, you don't spend a lot.
Note: Most of them also provide hot water, not just heating and cooling
But all told, the path to making it popular would be to make it part of new construction. I understand why they want to try to make retrofitting cheap, but it's just not even close right now.