Geothermal Energy Use, Country Update for Finland

Abstract

In Finland a huge growth in the amount of HPs started from the year 2005 with less than 100 000 HPs up to today`s 540 000 HPs. The strongest growth has taken place in air-coupled HPs but also in GSHPs the yearly increase has been tens of % with the record of 72% in 2012 (Fig. 1). Today over half of new small houses utilizes HP technology and an increasing number of big targets like office buildings and shopping centres markets take GSHPs for heating and cooling of spaces. A clear trend is toward large GSHP installations but still today domestic systems are growing fastest and > 50 % of new small houses takes geothermal heating/cooling. The largest installation is in a logistics centre in southern part of Finland with 150 BHEs, each 300 m deep (total 45 000 m). This energy field/installation has been provided by an advanced real-time fibre optic monitoring system designed by Geological Survey of Finland GTK.