Oil and gas isn't the only source of energy lurking under our feet. Drill deep enough and Earth's temperature stays consistent enough that it can be a source of heating and cooling for homes, offices, and data centers.
But in many regions, geothermal wells today bottom out at around 500 feet, a limitation that is largely dictated by the sort of drilling equipment that's typically used.
"It's pretty shallow, and you're going to need two or three times the amount of space if you only go to those depths," Joselyn Lai, co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Energy, told TechCrunch.
To minimize geothermal's footprint, Bedrock drills deeper.
"In a cooling-dominant location, that can very well be 800 to 1,000 feet, which is three times more space efficient. And in a heating-dominant location, that can very well be 1,000 to 1,200 feet or even more, which is two times more space efficient," Lai said.
Because it doesn't need as much land, Bedrock has been targeting commercial buildings where land tends to be at a premium. It completed its first two installations last year, one at an office building in Austin, Texas, and another at a resort in Utah. For installations like these, Lai said that the company expects to be profitable on a project basis in the next year.
Bedrock has also started to explore applying geothermal cooling to data centers. Last fall, the startup partnered with Dominion Energy to study the space.
