| Title | Geothermal Exchange Innovations for Data Center Efficiency, Resiliency, Profitability, Sustainability, and Grid-Responsiveness |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jason Willeford, Saranya Anbarasu, Kingsley Nweye, Justin Teague, Jasmine Tran, Nicholas Fry |
| Year | 2026 |
| Conference | World Geothermal Congress |
| Keywords | |
| Abstract | Geothermal exchange offers golden opportunities for improving critical resiliency and energy efficiency of data centers, just in time for an Al-driven growth surge. Energy performance metrics for data centers (DC) typically include uptime and power usage effectiveness. While common knowledge in DC vernacular, these are less commonly understood amongst the geothermal community. These performance indicators provide operators with massive profits growth and emissions reduction potentials that should drive geothermal value proposition narratives. Combining geothermal expertise and data center design, operators can leverage new savings and business verticals by simply capturing waste heat, whether from power generation or server cooling. These new methods can couple sectors for broader regional grids, district heating and cooling, or controlled climate agriculture, among others. Sector coupling geothermal-DC strategies do not always fall within an operational cost model, as is the case with grid services, but their quantification will create more sustainable and financeable DC ventures. The key is thermal energy arbitrage, implemented wherever underground thermal energy storage (UTES) is possible. Similar to aboveground TES tanks but on a much larger scale, UTES systems open doors for loss of power resiliency, reduced cooling operating costs, electrical demand peak shaving and shifting, utility incentives, demand charge reductions, and favorable time of use rates. An important approach to capture this value stream is through dispatchable load or Virtual Power Plant (VPP) participation. Such amalgamations of geothermal systems, energy market arbitrage, and better DC design open new geographies for near-term DC buildout where utility power infrastructure is otherwise insufficient. |