Geothermal is too expensive, but the impossible drilling platform of Dig Energy could fix that

In a farm near Manchester, New Hampshire, recently they treated me with a dirty water stream, not exactly the type of things that most startups will show a reporter. If it weren’t for Your energyThe mud is a characteristic, not an error, of its compact drilling platform.

The startup, which has been operating in stealth over the past five years, developed the water jet drilling platform in an effort to make geothermal heating and cooling so economical that it will displace the boilers and fossil fuel bones. The platform is essential for that, promising to reduce drilling costs by up to 80%.

On Tuesday, Dig Energy emerged with $ 5 million in initial funds, Techcrunch has learned exclusively. The round was directed by Azolla Ventures and Avila VC with the participation of Baukunst, Conifer Infrastructure Partners, Koa Labs, Mercator Partners, Drew Scott and Suffolk Technologies.

Heating and cooling represent approximately one third of all energy use in the US, and in data centers, the figure can be as high as 40%. Geothermal can reduce HVAC’s use while saving network operators up to $ 4 billion annually. To help stabilize its crispy Red Eléctrica, the United States needs to pierce 6 million feet of geothermal well a day until 2050, according to the National Laboratory of Oak Ridge.

But the geothermal is not cheap, at least not at the beginning.

“In the United States, Geothermal has been 1% of buildings facilities for decades,” said the co -founder and CEO of Dulcie Madden to TechCrunch. That despite the low operating costs of technology. “It really is just because the cost in advance is very, so expensive.”

There are two main flavors of the geothermal: geothermal perforations improved by thousands or tens of thousands of feet. Companies like Fervo and Quaise that are drilling the depths are taking advantage of very bad temperatures, usually in hundreds of degrees, to generate electricity. The other shallow geothermal, which is what excavation focuses, is usually limited to hundreds of feet. At these depths, the soil maintains a constant temperature throughout the year, which is perfect for heating and cooling residential and commercial buildings.

In shallow geothermal, pipes transport water underground where the heat transfers to or from Earth. In the summer, it throws excess heat, and cold water returns to the surface to cool a building. In the winter, absorb heat to heat it.

Install the earth loop, as the underground pipe is called, it represents around 30% of the total cost of a heat pump of terrestrial origin and is one of the main reasons why technology remains more expensive than conventional heating and air conditioning systems. Addressing these costs was high on the DIG list.

“When we start, we think, can we build a lower cost drill?” Madden said.

Madden and his co -founder, the husband Thomas Lipoma, began to explore the space five years after finishing their previous start, the rest devices. They soon encountered old investigations that described how to use water jets instead of traditional cutting pieces to bore the earth.

But while there were many research on technology, it was not yet ready for stellar schedule. “Much of the drilling technology has been reduced from oil and gas,” said Madden. Translation: It tends to be great, expensive and dominated for something as geothermal to the depths that excavation is plumbing.

DIG has spent years refining the design of its platform, drilling trial holes near its offices in New Hampshire. They have drilled through the ground, gravel, clay, sand and a variety of different types of rocks, including sandstone, limestone, granite, blackboard and lutita. The team showed me test blocks of a very dense rock with tuned holes carved in the middle.

Today’s geothermal drilling platforms can do the same, but are massive compared. The most used versions are in the back of large trucks. For easy access sites, they work well enough. But they cannot tighten the lateral lots in the rear courtyards of people, and in the commercial construction sites, they occupy a precious free space.

While the DIG prototype is not ready for commercial use, what I saw was substantially smaller than widely used geothermal drilling platforms. The holes that pierce are also more straight than those manufactured by traditional platforms. Together, these two details mean that DIG drilling holes can be placed more together, a blessing for any developer.

When ready for your first commercial pilots, something that this seed round will help you achieve, the DIG platform will grow slightly in size, but it will not require the large double axis trucks that currently dominate the industry.

The company plans to sell the devices to the perforators, giving them another option for existing projects and potentially opening roads to new ones. Other companies are also exploring technology.

“We should not have to demand people to buy a $ 2 million platform, it should be something that is a lower cost where they can enter the business,” said Madden. “The geothermal must be 100% of the buildings. It is in 1% of the buildings. So how do we close 99%?” She added. “It is effectively an unspecified market.”