Geothermal support for developers and investors
You do not need convincing. You need projects delivered. TownRock Energy is the subsurface, engineering and commercial backbone behind bankable geothermal projects, working with developers, energy companies, infrastructure investors and lenders on UK and international schemes.
What makes a project worth ranking
When we screen a portfolio for a development company, these are the criteria we rank against.
- A large anchor heat off-taker, ideally around 5 MW capacity buying roughly 40,000 MWh a year
- Smaller anchor loads above 20,000 MWh where geology, technology, customer type or local energy pricing align
- An off-taker poised to engage and likely to be ready to negotiate a heat off-take agreement
- A large, deep, interconnected mine water resource, or a suitable Sherwood Sandstone aquifer
- Some prior scoping or feasibility work, with indicative capex and a positive feasibility assessment
- Identified potential locations for boreholes or an energy centre
Many high-value sites will not fund a geothermal system themselves, but will sign a long-term off-take agreement. That is where a development company takes the risk, invests the capital and holds the revenue, and it is why we screen whole portfolios using historic reports, market knowledge and our own opportunity database rather than assessing sites one at a time.
What embedding TownRock signals to your investors
Delivery credibility, not just analysis
Almost 40 exploratory and operational boreholes drilled, and we still operate schemes we designed. Investors can tell the difference between a consultancy that models projects and one that has built them.
Consents secured early, not discovered late
Groundwater Investigation Consent, abstraction and reinjection licences, Heat Access Agreement, Permit to Enter Workings. We helped forge the modern UK permitting landscape alongside the Environment Agency and the Mining Remediation Authority.
An adviser with nothing to sell
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.
Projects investors have backed
Galleries to Calories, a mine water geobattery
A £2.6m international R&D project funded by Scottish Enterprise and the US Department of Energy, assessing the techno-economic feasibility of storing data centre waste heat in flooded mine workings beneath Edinburgh. TownRock is Project Manager and Industry Technical Lead.
Heat network concept for a European developer
Concept design and project cashflow modelling for a developer taking a scheme towards funding, sizing capacity against demand and producing the returns and sensitivity analysis their investment case rested on.
Two schemes we designed, delivered and still run
A 2.4 MWth and a 1.2 MWth mine water scheme, the only two privately funded and owned systems in the UK. Auditing, re-drilling and re-completion doubled the generating capacity and halved the maintenance costs, and secured the UK’s only private-company Heat Access Agreement.
We work to your funding milestones
Pre-FEED
Portfolio screening & ranking
Projects quantified and ranked against your investment criteria, then concept designs, cashflow modelling and the visuals that go in front of funders.
Commercialisation
FEED & permitting
Detailed design, permit applications, budget certainty ahead of FID.
Construction
Drilling & build
Drilling, testing, conditioning, end of well reporting, plant and commissioning.
Operation
Revenue & O&M
Switch-on, then monitoring, predictive maintenance and compliance.
What delivery actually looks like
An indicative programme from appointment to revenue, based on the UK commercial and permitting landscape.
Months 1 to 8
Pre-construction
Off-take agreements, site visit, existing infrastructure and subsurface assessment, permitting and environmental monitoring, subsurface modelling, borehole placement and design, surface plant and pipework design, soft procurement with initial supplier quotations, risk assessment.
Months 9 to 17
Subsurface construction
Stakeholder engagement, contractor procurement, continued monitoring, site preparation, rig mobilisation, drilling and borehole construction, borehole testing and conditioning, end of well report, demobilisation and site reinstatement.
Months 16 to 23
Surface plant
Trenching and pipework installation, energy centre construction, surface plant installation, full system commissioning, operations and maintenance plan finalised.
Month 24 onward
Operation
System switch-on and start of revenue generation. Monitoring, predictive maintenance, optimisation and regulatory compliance across the life of the asset.
Bring us your pipeline
We will rank it against your investment criteria and tell you which projects are worth your capital.