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Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Not at all! Very different principle. "Geothermal" heat pumps are just using the ground as a thermal mass. There's no extraction of the energy from the Earth's interior, with such a heat pump, just using dirt as a thermal buffer (between the seasons).

It's actually super annoying that the same word "geothermal" is used for both. If I were emperor of the world, I'd ensure that the proper "ground-source heat pump" were used instead of the criminally misleading "geothermal."

Ground-source heat pumps are not energy sources, they consume energy.

What Iceland is doing is actually developing an energy source.

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Iceland has also been utilizing its geothermal resources for centuries. Currently circa 22% of their electricity and 87% of the heating and hot water needs are met using geothermal energy.

Centuries? That's a lot of time. What kind of activities were they doing two centuries ago? Smelting iron ore?

Think like tapping hot springs for bathing and keeping your house warm or even cooking. When I was in Indonesia, I saw people would boil vegetables in the hotsprings.

Cool, thank you

The sulfuric smell in the hot water takes a little getting used to, but it's pretty amazing that it's naturally heated in most places throughout the country (though, a bit easier in such a tiny country).

The sulfuric smell in the hot water has nothing to do with the use of geothermal power. Most tourists think so because they've only been to or near the capital area.

Reykjavík artificially adds sulfur to its hot water to reduce the corrosion of their hot water pipes.

I can't find a source for that in English but there's one in Icelandic, it's the "Vinnslutæknileg vandamál við vinnslu jarðhita" section.

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20160813045634/http://www.samorka...

This seems contrary to most tourism information, and that PDF is pretty much the only source I can find... interesting. So they intentionally make their hot water non-potable to prevent corrosion (the bulk of tourism info recommends not drinking the hot water)?

Seems like Iceland could really use some sort of myth/fact information as they continue look to grow their tourism.

You should never drink hot tap water from any source unless you boiled it yourself using cold tap water in a kettle somehow anyway. There's increased likelyhood of bacteria and trace heavy metals from whatever heating equipment was used. Totally not worth it.

Probably OK to drink if you use a gas or electric califont (zero hot water storage).

Why would they? The Blue Lagoon, aka Icelands largest tourist trap, is completely artificial and is waste water.

They have very little incentive to "correct" people

The Blue Lagoon also publicly posts the information about where the water comes from.

I also know some Iceland natives who actually like it, so I wouldn't completely dismiss it as a tourist trap.

Wow, that's totally contrary to what I thought I learned when I went there, but a number of sources seem to support this.

Po-teh-to/Po-tah-to

https://energy.gov/energysaver/geothermal-heat-pumps

If you have an issue with how it's marketed, I'd suggest inquiring against it.

I was going to use "heat pump" but then was sure to get corrected on a traditional heat pump (like in your AC unit) vs a ground-based heat pump.

Air-source vs ground-source.

I need to start using that.

  "If I were emperor of the world..."

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