Dandelion Energy Inc., a company that emerged out of Alphabet Inc.’s X incubator last year, says its custom-designed drilling rig will make geothermal heating systems more affordable to homeowners.
The Brooklyn-based company expects to begin drilling wells in June for heating and cooling systems that will cost less than $20,000. That’s about half the price of typical residential geothermal energy installations available today, according to Chief Technology Officer James Quazi.
Residential geothermal heating is uncommon, in part because the expense and effort to dig the wells make them costly to install in existing homes. Dandelion’s drill was designed to address this. The systems use pumps from Aaon Inc. to extract underground heat that keeps homes warm in the winter and also provides air conditioning in the summer. The company is already marketing the technology in parts of New York state.
“We have a backlog of about 50 clients that signed up since last fall,” Quazi said in an interview. “We’ll begin our first installations in June.”
Read Complete Article