Chile Forum

I couldn't decide whether this was more relevant to economics but decided to post here. This is simply a company's own news but I thought it interesting as I believe there's been largely agreement on the benefit of geothermal energy in Chile.

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Magma Energy Corp. ("Magma") announces that it has closed a $26.3 million financing through the issuance of 21,045,000 common shares at a price of $1.25 per share. Magma is currently a private company with, post-financing, approximately 160 million shares issued and outstanding.

Magma is dedicated to becoming one of the world's pre-eminent geothermal energy companies through aggressive development of its existing portfolio of 21 geothermal properties in the USA, Chile, Peru, Nicaragua and Argentina.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28739349/

This is exciting! We are building a house a couple hours outside of Santiago in a very rural area, so we decided we wanted to make it as "off-the-grid" as possible. We were VERY interested in geothermal energy for a variety of reasons, but of course the cost is substantially more in Chile than it is here in the US, even for a new build. I think in the US you can have it put in a new build for about US$10k. At first we thought Chile would be prime for this because of its location at the edge of the plate, and the fact that the ground is actually hotter (ergo, more energy) there, but because of the lack of technology, we ran into a lot of issues. So as of right now, we've decided to go with electric, hoping to get some solar panels installed, but since it's in such an isolated area with a vast amount of land around it, the possibility of installing geothermal at a later time isn't as daunting as it would be in the city, for instance. I'm excited to see progress in the technology, for the good of Chile and for the US. I live in the Northern US right now and I know that if heating costs rise any more, it will bankrupt people just to heat their homes in the winter. This is a problem!

Are you confusing Geothermal as in using steam from the ground (or pumping water to generate heat) with geo heat pump type heating and cooling systems for homes which just circulate a closed loop of liquid through the ground to heat or cool a house by changing the pressure in the line. I am not aware of any systems that use true geothermal for just homes. They are fairly big industrial operations similar to drilling an oil well.

I have been looking in to doing the home system here in Chile, as the temperature variation in Chile is fairly small from winter to summer. The big thing is finding anyone that can do it here. So, I have been investigating how to do it myself. I posted a thread some time ago about it I believe.

Either way, I think both would be big big opportunity for Chile to fix its energy dependence problems.

I recently have been buying stock in Geothermal electric generation companies little by little because I think they are one of the few really green technologies. Solar, wind, even hydro all have far more drawbacks.

They're both really the same thing, just on a different scale. In fact, even the home units can handle large temperature differences (I know several people here in Northeast Ohio with geothermal units and they've handled the sub-zero F temps lately). My understanding is that it is very difficult to do a self-installation because the loop must run at least 10 feet underground for quite a length. Do you have forced air or boiler heating (or any central heating)? I have to imagine that if one has boiler heat, once the underground stuff is laid, the rest of the installation would be a snap. Last I had checked, our architect was asking around to see if he could find anyone to do a home installation--he said he has done some geothermal projects but on large buildings. I'm going to be in Santiago to meet w/ him in about two weeks, so maybe I'll have some more information then. But we do know a few people who work in alternative energy in Chile and everyone seems pretty hopeful for the future but grim at the immediate prospects for alternative energy sources. (The context of this is that the farm we are developing is meant to be a low environmental-impact operation, so alternative energy is near the top of our list of interests at the moment.)

I have heard about Geothermal for houses from some time now, but I have only really started to look into it. From what I have found so far if you have a boiler and try to covert to geo, you are going to be disappointed. The heat generated from the ground isn't nearly as hot as what the boiler would generate normally. AS someone in the new home construction field it is something worth looking into.

They also say that the system should be used year round. Because in the summer when it is hot it will "recharge" the ground by removing heat from the air and storing it in the ground. The guy at the home show last weekend said that this is the number one complaint from people that use the system. They use it just fine in the winter for a few years but never use it in the summer months, instead the just open a window, so they drain the heat from the ground and never replace it. With the tectonics in Chile the ground might be hotter or regenerate lost heat faster but it is still a concern that we are looking into before we install the system.

To Admin, from what I see the fields system is fairly straight forward and could be accomplished with products from off the shelf at HomeCentre or Easy. But once you get it into the house that is where it gets complicated. You could probably rig something up with an old AC unit but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you find a contractor in Chile that does the whole system please let me know because we are seriously considering this system in our house.

admin wrote:So, I have been investigating how to do it myself. I posted a thread some time ago about it I believe. .

Yes, you did post previously and if one does a search for geothermal on the forum, there are many threads-I just couldn't decide where to post...

Geothermal systems take a relatively small amount of heat from the ground, so there shouldn't be an issue of the ground eventually not having enough. But you're right, the heat isn't as hot as a normal system would be. However, using electricity, you can further heat the water or air to an acceptable temperature. This costs money, of course, but not nearly as much as it would to heat the house w/ electric. I have a contractor here at work that does this and claims to spend about US$300 a year on heating and cooling in the form of electricity for the pump (much colder here, of course). The benefit of running the system in the summer is that it can also be a cooling system. I'm not a big AC fan, so this isn't something I've researched much, but if the stable underground temp is, say, 60 or 65 degrees F, it seems like a pretty economical choice for cooling.

As I understand the energy in the ground is replenish by the sun, not volcanic activity. It works like a hot cold themas you put soup in one day, and ice tea in the next day. Because 4 feet or so down in the earth is relatively stable either hotter or colder than the air or surface temp depending on the time of year.

Yea, you can buy the heat pumps. They run about $2000 from what I have seen. They need to be charged. Most of what I have read says that the big cost in the States is related to digging the whole. Well, that is not problem in Chile. So, now we are down to the in house installation. I just would be very careful about who claims they can really do it in Chile. It is supposedly something that takes some background skill to install (on the other hand no one seems to fully explain this on the internet, and I can download do it yourself airplane instructions and nuclear reactors)

This does a good job of distinguishing the differences between geothermal and geo exchange systems for home.
http://www.geoexchangezine.com/save-money-on-heating/

People have done it without the contractor as in this thread.

https://gbt.buildcentral.com/Forums/tab ... fault.aspx

This site seems to cover it in
great detail.

http://www.ourcoolhouse.com/phase3.htm

There was one I had a while ago, and can not find that had a lot of step by step stuff, and gotchas.

allegro wrote:Geothermal systems take a relatively small amount of heat from the ground, so there shouldn't be an issue of the ground eventually not having enough.

I do not agree with this point at all... in a true geothermal system every BTU you use to heat your house come from the ground. If you think of how much energy it takes to heat your house over the course of one heating season you can see the numbers start to add up.

Maybe this is uniquely Canadian problem because our winters are so much colder but with a simple understanding of insulators and how the ground acts as one you should be able see that if you take the heat from that specific area faster than it can be transferred from the surrounding area you are going to “run out” of heat. Until it can catch up, from what I have seen/read they best way to use your system is to “recharge” it in the summer by taking the heat from the air and putting it back into the ground. So you are more or less using the ground as a huge heat storage to use when you need to warm up. All the while keeping cool in the summer.

In Chile, this may not a problem because the heating season is only 2 or 3 months (compared to at least 6 if not 8 in most parts of Canada.).

For off grid living, solar, PV, heat pumps etc the Navitron forums are a mine of information from people who have mostly done it DIY on limited funds ( limited funds definitely includes me ).
The long Frotter thread in the Show us yours section is a good read if you have a day to spare!
Although Navitron does PV, wind, solar panels etc they don't push their stuff in the forum so it covers pretty much anything.
Allegro, interested to know how you get on as we were thinking about solar, wind or PV in the long term. Are you going for battery bank and inverter? Maybe a set of second hand fork lift batteries?

http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/