We get questions

The Centre for Energy’s portal is loaded with factual and statistical information about Canada’s energy system. But we still get questions, like this one.

Q:  I caught the last few minutes of a documentary on TV about a Canadian mining town that uses water from an abandoned mine for geothermal heating. Can you tell me the name of the town?
A:  The city in question is Springhill, Nova Scotia. Springhill had a long history of coal mining, beginning in 1830; however following disasters in 1891, 1956 and 1958 the mines were closed in 1962. In the late 1980s, interest in using the mine water as a heat source resulted in the development of the Springhill Geothermal Industrial Park. Natural Resources Canada, talks about this on its website. 

The technology used in Springhill is actually a geothermal heat pump system, also known as earth energy or geo-exchange, which operates at lower temperatures than true geothermal systems.

True geothermal systems use super-heated water from deep within the earth to provide heat, such as in Iceland and parts of Western Canada and California. With these types of systems, the water is generally hot enough that heat pumps are not required. They are often found in tectonically active areas and are associated with geysers and hotsprings.

Another city in Canada contemplating the use of mine water as a geothermal heat source is Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. The city contracted the University of British Columbia to perform a feasibility study (448KB PDF).

Got a question?
Send it to infoservices@centreforenergy.com – we’ll answer it and might even publish it on Flow.