| Abstract |
The first U.S. geothermal district heating system, built in Boise, Idaho in 1892, is still running strong and currently serves about 275 customers. Yet its early start up did not lead to the kind of growth one might expect in a country with such high demand for heating homes and buildings. Currently in the U.S., after over a century of development in the sector, there are only 21 operating Geothermal District Heating Systems (GDHS) providing about 100 MWt. The systems were developed in the 1980s or earlier with the exception of three systems developed in the last five years. The slow growth of the U.S. GDHS sector has been in sharp contrast to what happened in Iceland where the first GDHS was built in the 1930s and now about 90% of the country |