Underground Energy, LLC products

ATES is an innovative open-loop geothermal technology. It relies on seasonal storage of cold and/or warm groundwater in an aquifer. The technology was developed in Europe over 20 years ago and is now in use at over 1,000 sites, mostly in The Netherlands and Scandinavia. ATES is essentially unheard of in the US, with the exception of the ATES project at Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey. Although ATES is highly efficient and very “green,” it is not a renewable energy technology as it is used for energy conservation, not energy production. However, ATES is often used in conjunction with renewables, such as use of solar hot water panels to create hot water for storage in summer, and with solar- or wind-powered electricity to power the mechanical components of an ATES system.

BTES is an improvement on conventional closed-loop ground source heat pump (GSHP) geothermal systems. The ground heat exchanger (GHX) array for a BTES system is designed and operated in a manner such heat is stored or abstracted seasonally, whereas conventional GSHP systems are designed to simply dissipate heat or cold into the subsurface. BTES essentially uses the Earth as a thermal battery, as opposed to a radiator.