🔒Residential geothermal company Dandelion, fresh off local acquisition, eyes ambitious growth in CT

A New York-based geothermal home heating and cooling installer is making new inroads into Connecticut, a sign, its CEO says, not only of the company’s growth ambitions but new receptiveness to the technology, which in recent years has been emerging from the shadows of better-known competitors.

“We think Connecticut is a really great market for this,” said Dandelion Energy CEO Michael Sachse. “Most people use fuel oil or propane for their homes, and this is a cheaper, cleaner option that’s going to contribute to the value of your home.”

Dandelion last month purchased Durham-based Glacier Drilling, a move that gives the company an experienced and reliable drilling unit in-house and resolves the lengthy process of having to acquire a state drilling license on its own, while using subcontractors in the meantime.

“We’re looking to have more availability to serve more of the state,” Sachse said. “We were always looking for help with drilling, there aren’t a lot of drillers in Connecticut, and we were incredibly impressed with [Glacier owner and President] Mark Schock and the team he’s built.”

The acquisition came less than a year after Dandelion opened an operations center in Windsor, at 460 Hayden Station Road, its first brick-and-mortar location in the state.

The company, which has installed around 700,000 geothermal heat pumps, has worked mainly in New York, Massachusetts and western Connecticut, but its customer base is expanding east. Sachse estimated there are around 100 Connecticut customers, spread across the state, currently awaiting their installations.

“We’re focused on how we can respond to the demand,” he said. “We want to keep up with that demand from customers.”

Confluence of factors

Dandelion started doing business in Connecticut when in-state utility companies began offering rebates for geothermal systems, at $1,500 per ton, not an insubstantial amount considering the average residential system is about 4 or 5 tons.

Adoption has been steady since, and seems to be picking up speed due to the rising price of most home heating fuels.

“Fuel oil and propane costs are high, they’re likely to stay high, and this is a way to wean yourself off of that,” Sachse said.

Unlike industrial-scale geothermal power, which requires boring deep into the ground to harness energy radiating from the center of the Earth, residential projects use geothermal heat pumps — also known as ground-source heat pumps — that leverage the ground’s steady temperature to heat or cool a home through a series of heat transfers.

The technology runs off electricity, so users’ power bills do go up, Sachse cautioned, but they will not have to spend anything on fuel oil, propane or natural gas. It’s also completely sustainable, he noted, since nothing is being burned.

Bill Colonis, a senior project manager at the Connecticut Green Bank, a quasi-public agency that finances clean energy and energy efficiency projects, said changes in government and utility policies over the years have helped make geothermal a more manageable investment than it once was.

“The biggest barrier for geothermal has always been the high upfront cost,” Colonis said. “If you look through the life-cycle costs, it comes out and makes sense, it just takes a little bit more planning.”

The price tag for any one project varies considerably depending on the construction and existing energy efficiency of the house where the heat pump will be installed.

According to Dandelion’s pricing, a 5-ton heat pump can cost between $7,500 and $12,500, and that’s before factoring in drilling, permits and ductwork.

To help consumers absorb the expense, the Green Bank offers Smart-E loans, with no money down and flexible terms. Combined with utility rebates and a federal tax credit of 26% off the price of the geothermal system, Colonis said, the sticker price can be somewhat tamed.

“I think the prospects are very good,” he said. “You can use and patch together those incentives to keep the upfront costs under control.”

The technology also has obvious environment benefits, a plus at a time when the state is looking at various ways to cut carbon emissions.

Sachse said geothermal’s appeal is not just in the switch to electric power from heating fuels, but a more efficient use of existing electricity resources.

“There’s a move to electrify everything, which we support, but we have to look at efficiency, or else we will be building a lot more power plants, which we are not prepared to do,” he said.

‘Everything under one roof’

Schock — who with his staff of 10 is now a Dandelion employee — helmed Glacier for 26 years, dealing almost entirely with environmental drilling, including drilling for geothermal heat pumps, as well as performing due diligence on land for buyers and soil sampling.

He said the linkup made sense, since Glacier is permitted and Dandelion is increasingly active in the region.

He also reserved praise for Dandelion’s business model, offering his own experience as an example.

About six years ago, Schock and his wife purchased a 180-year-old farmhouse and carried out extensive renovations, including the installation of a geothermal heating and cooling system. Glacier performed the drilling, but it took an additional three companies to install the heat pump and configure the needed components, putting Schock in the position of serving as a de facto general contractor.

“When I saw Dandelion’s model, you have everything under one roof, soup to nuts,” he said. “They document everything, they take care of everything. It’s what the industry needs.”