Geothermal Energy for Residential Co-Generation

Nowadays the environmental pollution is one of the main concerns worldwide going next to the preoccupation to ensure the energy consumption of the modern world continuously increasing. One solution to this issue is the energy generation using renewable sources, especially considering the classic energy sources being limited and the unfavorable availability forecast for coal, natural gas and oil. The paper is structured in five chapters and addresses a topic related to the exploitation of renewable energy sources to generate heat and power using modern and sustainable solutions in order to reduce the environmental impact by facilitating greenhouse emissions savings. The first chapter presents general considerations related to the solutions to generate heat from geothermal energy providing brief information about an existing geothermal system in Oradea, underlines the importance of the main topic and the current concerns. In the second chapter are evaluated the geothermal system's performance indicators based on the real energy audit. The third chapter shows an eco-friendly and financial efficient solution to exploit the geothermal potential for co-generation of heat and power, being presented the optimized energy balance and new performance indicators. In the fourth chapter are given economical appraisal results of the geothermal co-generation investment and the last chapter indicates the final conclusions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.