[1andrew1]

I found this a fascinating read.

The Cornish village getting its heat from beneath the street

Could a new shared network of ground-source heat pumps provide a model for decarbonising millions of UK homes?

The scheme involves drilling boreholes 100 metres underground, where liquid can absorb heat at a constant 10C-12C. This is then piped into people’s homes, where the warmth is extracted by a ground-source heat pump. Like an air-source pump, this relies on refrigerant technology running backwards — crucially, though, it’s 30-40 per cent more efficient than the air-source version because it doesn’t have to cope with really low temperatures in winter.

In this scheme, however, rather than each heat pump having its own piping — which can make the technology incredibly expensive — residents’ boreholes are connected to a communal network of horizontal pipes just below street level.

The idea already looks attractive to some housebuilders who build new estates from scratch. It would be easy for them to lay a heat network alongside the water, power and telecoms as they lay the roads.

Read more at: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www....3-e55f8e34385a
https://heatthestreets.co.uk/