NS: Geothermal demand heating up for business

[SPRINGHILL, NS] – Fifteen years ago few, if any, outside of Cumberland County could tell you what geothermal meant let alone how it works. 

Mark McCormick, owner and operator of Advanced Heating Solutions, says those days are disappearing. Today geothermal is one of the many tools home owners and businesses are calling on to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels. 

“Geothermal, really, is taking off. The biggest reason is the price of oil,” he says. 

With the cost of oil heating in a constant state of flux, finite solutions like geothermal are appealing to more and more home owners, Whether its retrofitting an existing home or building from the ground up, people are turning to the Internet to find solutions and geothermal is becoming the trend. 

“People are so educated today compared to 20 years ago when they didn’t have the Internet.”

While retrofitting homes does have its limitations – namely cost – the world to geothermal is wide open for new homes. In both instances, McCormick says, homeowners are working towards what’s called payback; the day when their investment into geothermal has run its course and are paying virtually nothing for their heating. It’s a formula that appeals to everyone. 

“There’s a wide range of people buying their first home, older people who don’t want to use burn wood any more. Others don’t want to be at the mercy of oil prices,” McCormick said. 

If the idea of one day enjoying relatively free heat wasn’t enough incentive, McCormick says, the federal and provincial governments provide cash incentives, too, to further entice homeowners and would-be homeowners to consider carbon-reducing solutions. But knowing it is a new technology for the region, McCormick says he has to limit his own enthusiasm to provide heat pumps. As a business owner McCormick keeps his distribution and installation of geothermal and solar units to within a one-hour radius from his home so he can personally service the units. 

In a nutshell, geothermal technology runs fluid into the ground and is warmed by the earth. After its warmed up and is drawn into a heat pump which accumulates the warmth and blown into the home. Come the summertime the process can be reversed and cool home like an air conditioner. 

The biggest application not yet touched by the geothermal sector, Ross Refrigeration owner Ralph Ross says, is manufacturing and the potential spin-offs but that’s slowly changing. 

Ross isn’t just into keeping things cool. He’s known as the godfather of mine-based geothermal energy in Springhill and its from the former mining town geothermal is being used to change industry. Working with the local business sector, Ross has helped solve cooling and heating issues for a number of the areas manufacturers, only just coming up with a new innovation for the heat transferring technology. 

“Surrette Battery wanted to buy a machine from Italy that cools batteries to prolong their life,” Ross explained to a group of bank managers and dignitaries on behalf of the province of Nova Scotia this April. The units, costing upwards of $400,000, cooled the batteries by displacing the heat. According to Ross to remove the generated heat would require an additional device to the tune of  $70,000 and would have annual power consumption costs. His solution, tapping the cooling unit into the factories existing min-based geothermal loop, moved the heat into the discharge line returning the heated water into the mines had a one-time cost of $2,000. 

“We know have a factory with more heat than they can use,” Ross says. “In this factory alone I’m throwing out 400 million gallons a day of 100 degree water.”

Should the province remove its stringent restrictions on greenhouses that excess heat could be redirected, Ross says, and Springhill could witness an agricultural boon not imagined 100 years ago.