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This is covering deep geothermal, trying to get into the huge heat source from radioactive decay in the earth’s core.

This is not covering back-yard geothermal for home cooling/heating.

I had no idea such a small amount of the earth’s heat could be harvested to satisfy all of humanity’s energy need (assuming humanity doesn’t start doing stupid things when we have access to unlimited energy...)



In industry we usually refer to "geothermal" as heat from radioactive decay, and "geoexchange" from the backyard stuff, where the source is solar heating.

You're not wrong, that just seems to be the way we get around constant disambiguation. I was the CTO for a Canadian geothermal company.


We also just called it ground source when I briefly worked in the field. Although, in my experience, even though someone shells out $$$ for a "ground source heat pump" in their yard, it won't stop them from telling everyone they have geothermal.


Here we just call them (water) heat pumps.


Ok, we've deepened the title above.




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