Geothermal solutions for the private sector
If you are a distillery, food and drink manufacturer, data centre, warehouse, hotel, leisure venue, greenhouse or other industry with a large, constant heat demand, there may be a low-carbon heating and cooling system beneath your site. TownRock Energy finds out whether it is worth using, then designs, builds and runs it.
Worth a conversation if…
- Your heating or cooling demand is large, MW-scale and constant
- You rely heavily on gas and volatility has hit your costs
- You own the site, or hold a long lease on it
- Boilers or chillers are due for replacement, or an expansion is planned
- You have a decarbonisation commitment with a date attached
TownRock keeps you in the driving seat, with your own value drivers as the starting point for every project. We develop no schemes for our own account, hold no equity in the projects we advise on, and take no commission from developers, funders or equipment suppliers.
What you get out of the ground
Heat you own, not heat you buy
Once the capital is in the ground, your heat cost stops tracking the gas market.
Heating and cooling in one system
If you have a cooling load as well as a heating load, the ground can take heat away and give cooling back. This is where the numbers get good, and it is the principle behind Galleries to Calories, our £2.6m project storing data centre waste heat in flooded mine workings beneath Edinburgh.
A 40-year asset
Boreholes outlive the plant that sits on them. The picture changes when you compare the cost over the life of the asset rather than at the point of construction.
Built by TownRock
UK’s largest operating mine water scheme
Wine storage warehouses heated from flooded coal workings 131 m down. One of only two privately funded and owned mine water schemes in the UK. Since becoming lead technical consultant in 2021, auditing, re-drilling and re-completion have doubled generating capacity and halved maintenance costs.
BODYHEAT, a world first
We ran the feasibility study, built the investment-grade business case and secured the funding, then delivered and operated the borehole thermal energy storage system that captures the heat a crowd gives off and reuses it to heat and cool the venue.
The test well that unlocked the funding
TownRock designed the concept and de-risked the subsurface, planning, procuring, drilling and testing a test well in the hotel’s beer garden with zero disruption to a working hotel. The successful test unlocked LCITP capital grant funding from the Scottish Government, and the 1 MWth system serving the hotel and distillery has run since 2022.
Typical Stages
Free
Site screening
We map what is beneath your postcode against your heat demand and tell you if it is plausible.
Study
Options appraisal
Every suitable technology compared side by side, including air source.
Study
Feasibility & business case
Design, cost model, programme and a comparison against your gas baseline.
Delivery
Build and operate
Drilling, construction and O&M with us as Principal Designer.
Common questions
What if a study has already been done by another supplier?
We will review an existing study free of charge and tell you whether we agree with it, what we would question, and what a sensible starting point would be. Often the earlier work stands and we pick up from it.
How does geothermal compare to air source heat pumps?
Sometimes air source wins, and if it does we will say so. Geothermal tends to pull ahead on lifecycle cost, electrical consumption, asset life, and on any site with a simultaneous cooling load. The options appraisal exists to answer this rather than assert it.
What does it cost to find out properly?
The screening is free. A paid study is scoped to your site and your decision. We will tell you the price before you commit, and tell you if we do not think the study is worth commissioning yet.
How disruptive is drilling to a live operation?
Less than most people expect, and it is planned around your production. We set out site footprint, duration and access requirements at feasibility stage, before you are committed to anything.
What if this year’s budget is already allocated?
That is common, and a good reason to screen now. A project like this needs a business case before a budget cycle, not after it. The work done this year is what gets the line item approved next year.
Find out what is under your site
A short conversation, a free screening, and an answer either way.