Geothermal vs. other renewable technologies
Most people nowadays are familiar with renewable energy technologies such as Solar Thermal Hot Water, Solar Photovoltaics and Wind Power. These technologies tend to get the majority of attention from the media, and subsequently are also often in the spotlight when it comes to government subsidies. While we encourage any form of investment in renewable energy, the question becomes: ”Which technology will give us the Best Renewable Return On Investment?”.
If we want our society to become more environmentally friendly and less dependent on fossil fuels, and we want to do this in the most cost effective way, we need to evaluate which technology delivers the largest amount of renewable energy per dollar of investment.
We compared 4 common residential renewable energy alternatives in the Calgary market:
- 3 ton geothermal heating, A/C and hot water system;
- 2 Panel Solar Thermal system;
- 1.3KW Solar Photovoltaics system;
- 1.9KW Skystream Wind Turbine
Geothermal delivers the most renewable energy per $ invested
When you compare the investment cost for each installation and the amount of useable renewable energy delivered by each installation, geothermal delivers about twice the amount of renewable energy per $ invested compared to solar hot water heating, and about 6 times more renewable energy per $ invested compared to Solar PV or Wind Power.