Geothermal: Fit Your Budget and Your Site
A Hybrid geothermal heat pump system can be considered a good fit as an HVAC system in a Senior housing multifamily development. In any HVAC system, the plant equipment must be sized for its peak demand. Unfortunately, a facility usually requires the ‘peak’ capacity less than 10% of the year.
Conversely, Over 85% of the time, the facility’s heating and cooling equipment rarely uses more than 60% of its available capacity. Since the well field is the most expensive component in a geothermal system, the hybrid system takes advantage of these facts by strategically downsizing the well field just enough to exploit its high efficiency.
The fewer occurring ‘Peak demand’ periods can supplement the well field capacity with a small boiler plant (for heating) and cooling tower (for cooling). The cost savings for this approach depends on how much the well field is reduced by. If the field is reduced by 50%, one can expect the well field cost to be reduced by at least 40%.
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