BETTER HEAT
It's time for a BETTER approach. It's time to allow residents an option for home heating that is cleaner, cheaper, more reliable, and safer.
It’s time for a new community-focused model that doesn’t rely on burning fossil fuels, and instead leverages the heat of the earth to create a carbon-free, shared heating utility that allows the city’s residents to escape the crushing costs and risks of the gas infrastructure.
A modular, shared, geothermal backbone underneath communities can provide consumers an energy alternative that better meets their needs.
What is BETTER HEAT?
BETTER HEAT is a new community-focused model for building decarbonization, that creates shared, underground geothermal energy loops that deliver heat to buildings 5x more efficiently than gas heat.
BETTER HEAT
essential components
The BETTER HEAT model is not simply a specific technology or appliance. BETTER HEAT is a new vision for community-focused, carbon-free heat, that puts the community at the center.
BETTER HEAT takes a community-wide problem - how to replace gas for heat - and proposes a community-wide solution, one that creates access to geothermal energy for households that do not have the space or funds to do it on their own.
Shared Community Loop
Vertical Wells
Opt-in Approach
Connections
Electric Heat Pumps
Existing or New Appliances
A carbon-free, community heat utility
Shared Community Loop
The BETTER HEAT model does not require individual property owners to develop their own geothermal systems in limited space. Instead, BETTER HEAT creates community-sized loops that allow households to share the earth’s heating and cooling potential across the public right of way.
Vertical Wells
Along the Shared Community Loop are spaced vertical loops that can be drilled 400’ deep and connected to the community loop to enhance the heating and cooling potential of the Community Loop, as new buildings join the loops or as energy needs of the community change.
Opt-in Approach
The BETTER HEAT model allows individual buildings to join when they are ready, and does not require an entire community to transition at once. The progress toward building decarbonization will likely take decades, and buildings may not all be ready to switch their equipment and appliances at the same time.
Connections
When households are ready to connect their building to the Shared Community Loop, they will get a pair of pipes (input and output) run from the Loop to their new heat pump. These pipes will be connected to the Shared Community Loop in a container located in a vault underground in the public right of way.
Electric Heat Pumps
Electric heat pumps are common in warmer climates because the air temperature doesn’t get as cold. Using the liquid running through the pipes in the shared underground heating loop, the heat pump is able to leverage the earth’s warmer temperature, instead of cold outside air, and can run highly efficient, even in cold weather.
Existing or New Appliances
Electric heat pumps can often connect to a home’s existing appliances to distribute heat (and cool) around a home. Heat pumps can also be connected to wall and window air conditioning units to reduce electricity costs in the summer.
Want to Partner with us?
Want to find out more about BETTER HEAT and how to partner with us?
Send us a message today.