Colorado firm receives status as geothermal utility
PanTerra Energy website snapshot
Alexander Richter
18 Jul 2012
A colorado company is the first private company to be registered as a geothermal utility and will plans to act as a third party to finance, build, own and maintain geothermal exchange systems for commercial clients.
Reported from Denver, Colorado, PanTerra Energy LLC is the first private company in the state of Colorado to be registered as geothermal utility.
The registration with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission will allow the company to provide heating and cooling services to clients.
While the focus of ThinkGeoEnergy still remains with geothermal power, the large scale direct use or in this case for geothermal heat pumps is of interest.
The company, so the article in the Denver Business Journal, plans to “finance, build, own and maintain the systems” it plans to install in commercial office buildings.
The company names the third-party ownership business model that is common in the solar-power industry as a driver for their business model.
This is to help companies that have been reluctant to install geothermal exchange systems based on the necessary financing. Now this is handled by a third party, making it easier to install such systems.
Definitely an interesting model and maybe something to think about some smaller scale geothermal projects, e.g. in Europe. I remember a similar approach by a company trying to set up something similar in the U.S. and in Europe, but this was in 2007 and I don´t know what happened to the company.
Source: Denver Business Journal
