Renewable Energy Hub

If you’ve seen a big box store or an office building under construction, you’ve likely seen a deep hole in the ground, for the parking spaces that will be underground, etc. It is not unusual to dig a lot deeper than 5 feet when building office buildings: the magic spot for ground heat exchange geothermal power.

Yet, few of these projects incorporate geothermal (or ground heat exchange) pump technology. Yet low-carbon heating and cooling using the naturally mild and stable temperatures more than 5 feet down could cut energy costs by up to half.

IKEA is working with the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado to change all that, and possibly make geothermal heat a common energy reduction technology used in more commercial buildings in the US.

To reduce energy use in all 415,000 square feet of their new two story IKEA store in Centennial, Colorado, they are drilling 130 5 ½-inch diameter holes 500 feet deep below two parking levels underneath to tap into the moderate temperatures below ground with a geothermal piping system.

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