Top 6 Advantages of Geothermal Energy
Curious why everyone is talking about geothermal these days? It might be because upgrading to geothermal is good for your wallet, good for the planet, and good for you. In this blog post, we’ll give you a quick rundown on some of the best benefits of geothermal for you and your home.
Geothermal saves you money
The number one question on everyone’s mind is always money. Luckily, you can save a lot with geothermal. With traditional heating systems like furnaces or boilers, you end up paying for both the heating system and the heating source — fuel oil, natural gas, propane, etc. With geothermal heat pumps, you only have to pay for the heating system. You don’t need to pay extra for the heating source because you already own it: it’s the heat that comes from your own yard!
That’s why using geothermal instead of traditional heating systems can reduce energy costs up to 50%. And that’s not even factoring in the endless costs of maintenance, replacements, and leaks that come with traditional heating systems.
Our homeowners save thousands per year after upgrading from traditional heating fuels to Dandelion’s geothermal heat pump! Our financing options enable homeowners to start using geothermal heating and cooling for $0 down. Federal, state, and utility incentives certainly help as well.
Geothermal is convenient
Closed loop geothermal systems like Dandelion’s circulate heat from the ground into your home, so you own your own energy source. That means you’re no longer depending on others for your heating and cooling.
No more oil deliveries. No more fear of running out of oil mid-winter. No more anxiety about the gas being turned off when you need it the most. Need we say any more?
Even better, after installation, you’ll never have to think about heating and cooling problems ever again. Our monitoring software alerts us to any potential issues before they arise. Additionally, most geothermal systems require no regular maintenance other than air filter changes a few times a year.
Geothermal keeps your home comfortable.
We don’t have to tell you that traditional heating and cooling systems are noisy. They’re intrusive, they’re annoying, and they can make it difficult to hear the TV and to have conversations with your loved ones.
With geothermal, almost the entire system is buried underground, so you can say goodbye to noisy compressors and fans. Imagine being able to hear yourself think in your own home! And all the migraines brought on by your loud AC will be gone forever. When it comes to comfort, geothermal is the obvious choice for heating and cooling.
Geothermal helps you gain energy independence.
You’ve already paid for your yard and your home. Now, you have two choices. You can make a one-time purchase of a geothermal system, or you can fork over money to the utility companies for heating fuel every month for the rest of your life.
Upgrading to geothermal is well worth it because you’ll never have to rely upon oil deliveries or gas lines. With oil, you’re watching the price change every week because of factors that are out of your control, like foreign wars, supply and demand, and current politics.
Why wouldn’t you want to harvest the energy from your own yard, especially when you’ve already paid for it?
Geothermal is safe.
If you’re not okay with having contained, sustained explosions and fires in your home, it doesn’t make sense that you’re okay with having a furnace in your home. A furnace is essentially a large volume of highly-flammable oil or gas that is meant to explode. Even if the sustained explosions don’t escape your furnace, you still suffer through fuel smells in the best case and carbon monoxide poisoning leading to death in the worst case.
Meanwhile, geothermal doesn’t require any dangerous fuel — or any fuel at all, for that matter. Geothermal heat pumps simply pull heat from the ground to heat your home in the winter and dump heat from your home into the ground to cool it in the summer. There’s no combustion process, so you can sleep well at night knowing that your geothermal system won’t cause house fires or carbon monoxide poisoning.
Geothermal is eco-friendly.
This one’s fairly straightforward. A geothermal heat pump is a renewable technology that uses the ground’s energy to heat and cool.
Geothermal systems run on electricity alone, so they don’t directly produce any CO2 emissions. A good portion of electricity is produced from fossil fuels, but it’s possible to opt out of this by coupling your setup with solar panels to produce electricity.
In any case, heating and cooling will always require some energy input. The laws of physics tell us that you can’t “create” heat without using some energy, so the best thing we can do is be more efficient about the energy that we do use.
Traditional heating systems require a relatively high energy input to induce contained, sustained explosions. Meanwhile, geothermal requires a relatively low energy input to simply circulate heat to and from your home through convection. This makes it the most efficient heating and cooling solution out there.
