Clean Technica
Summary
When China starts scaling a technology at massive levels, the rest of the world should take notice. That’s not a geopolitical statement, it’s a thermodynamic and logistical one. China doesn’t mess around when it comes to heat, power, and infrastructure. And in the case of ground-source heat pumps used for district heating, China has been quietly laying down tens of thousands of systems, with over 77 GW of installed capacity by 2019.
The Chinese deployments, along with parallel efforts in places like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and even U.S. universities like Ball State, prove that ground-source heat pumps at district scale work. They’re not “emerging” technologies. They’re here, they’re big, and they’re getting better every year.
Take Ball State University in Indiana as an emblematic example. Over a few years, they drilled 3,600 boreholes about 120 meters deep across their campus and replaced an aging coal-powered steam system with water-to-water heat pumps. The result: 47 buildings heated and cooled with a system that delivers a seasonal coefficient of performance of 3.7.
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