Course: REEC 120 Sustainability and Renewable Energy

Unit 7 Overview

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In Unit 7 we are going to explore materials from the book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by David Mackay. You are expected to read four sections:

- “Heating and Cooling” pages 50-54
- “Geothermal” pages 96-99
- “Smarter Heating” pages 140-154
- “Light” pages 57-59

The rest of this unit has been adapted from a presentation by Timothy Wilhelm, from Kankakee Community College.

The sections of Mackay’s book for this unit focus on controlling the light and temperature of our surroundings. A typical British citizen utilizes 12kWh/d on just the heating of water. So if one were to think about all of the heating and cooling in our lives, heating our house in the winter and cooling it down in the summer, the typical resident in the UK will be using 37kWh/d.
A way to help offset the heating and cooling is to use a geothermal system. Think of geothermal systems as extracting heat from the rocks and dirt underground. If one takes too much heat from the dirt, it will start to get cold and we will have to wait a while for it to heat up again. The trick is to size the system to extract the energy but not more than the rocks and direct can give off. Usually this is not a problem for a home or building, but if a really big system is installed it is possible to extract too much.

The heat that the Earth provides comes from two main areas, one radioactive decay and the heat escaping from the mantel.