DIGGING DEEP

TAPPING INTO EXISTING SOURCES

Nature provides for us in simple and elegant ways.

When you hear about geothermal heating and cooling, and the low-key systems that provide inexpensive and sustainable comfort for homes and businesses, you have to wonder how we ended up drilling for fossil fuels.

There’s really no hindsight involved. Formal climate change predictions date as far back as 1896. We just weren’t paying attention. Now we have renewable energy options, but we’re still making poor choices.

To be fair, renewables had long failed to be affordable for new construction, or as a home modification. People may want to invest in the planet, but budgets advise otherwise, and they look instead to the return-on investment.

Kathy Hannun founded Dandelion Energy in 2017, knowing they would have to find ways to make geothermal more desirable, in terms of cost, trust in its capabilities and the installation process. They would have to innovatively hack the industry to achieve its mission of making renewable geothermal energy accessible and affordable to homeowners across the U.S.

So, they went to Sweden.

About 20% of homes there use geothermal heating and cooling.

“It’s already mainstreamed and scaled there. One of the things we wanted to learn was how they are able to do it much less expensively than here.”

A big difference is industry-specific drilling techniques that significantly reduce costs and are less disruptive to property. Swedish installers were happy to share their techniques, and Dandelion returned ready to adopt a different approach from the usual truck-mounted water well drilling rigs that don’t fit in about 50% of yards, and badly damage others.

Mounted on a continuous track, like tanks and bulldozers, the rig’s weight is spread out, so no ruts, and a tighter turning radius. They are safer, less expensive to buy and require fewer operators; cost savings all around and access to twice as many homes.

Here is how geothermal energy systems work

Most have experienced the basement climate phenomenon. While it’s a constant struggle to maintain optimum temperatures in the living space, just below, it's much warmer, even without heating, and blissfully cool on a hot day.

That’s because just 10 feet below the surface …