this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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I don't think Geothermal makes much sense unless you live in one of the extremes, mainly the cold one, For example I an from Slovakia and I don't think the temperature here went under -20C in the last few years, I barely remember any days going under - 10C, so you would be paying quite a premium for a geothermal heat pump for rather marginal gains, it would certainly need quite a good analysis if the difference in performance would ever pay for the price difference, especially with better insulation and heat recuperation systems becoming mandatory.
There are also things like heat pump based driers now on the market btw.
I suspect it’s mostly a function of mass availability. Even here in the states ground source heatpumps are rare, even though the systems are more reliable (since there is no equipment exposed to weather) and a shallow borehole isn’t excessively expensive.
I’d forgotten about heat pump clothes dryers. Those are fascinating, and really interesting for older buildings or locations without close access to exterior venting.
Shallow geothermal is basically dead in most of the world because it's too much hit and miss, the geology is simply too complex and involved (and underground) to predict. There's also a fuckton of issues with water ingress, minerals that like to expand when getting wet and such. You can't really take Iceland as an example for countries not straddling a continental rift.
Deep geothermal is utterly reliable but for the longest time drilling that deep was just too expensive. Plasma deep drilling is a solution but it's still in its infancy.
that's not the geothermal we are talking about, geothermal heat pumps
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/geothermal-heat-pumps
Those are ground source heat pumps.
Seriously by that nomenclature we'd also have aerothermal heat pumps.