Community Geothermal: Planning and Design of a Heating and Cooling System in Framingham, Massachusetts

These reports, plans, and drawings review the achievements of Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) and its partners to plan and design a network of interconnected ground-source heat pump systems, or geothermal network, in an area encompassing multiple environmental justice (EJ) neighborhoods in the City of Framingham, MA. The materials provided in this dataset include, a) stakeholder and design best practices, b) study on optimal method to interconnect geothermal loops, c) guidelines for monitoring and metering, d) operations and maintenance plans, e) permitting guidelines and f) 10-day driller tutorial curriculum. These materials can guide the efficient and ethical design of future geothermal networks nationwide.

The capacity of the system is estimated at 217 tons and is designed to provide 100% of heating and cooling needs for the buildings connected to the loop. In this project, 80 boreholes are used as the main thermal resources, the distribution system (or loop) consists of 0.61 miles of an 8-inch single-pipe at ambient temperature, with the capacity to connect 44 buildings, including 13 apartment buildings from the Framingham Housing Authority, one transitional home, one school building and 29 single family homes. While Framingham already has a geothermal network loop that is currently in the commissioning stage, our proposed project is unique because it is the first utility-led expansion loop (2nd loop) project that will connect to an adjacent existing geothermal loop (1st loop) in a pre-existing neighborhood. Both the 1st and 2nd loops are being installed, owned and operated by Eversource Energy, the utility Deployment Partner.

Data and Resources

Field Value
DOI 10.15121/2448376
accessLevel public
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issued 2024-09-01T06:00:00Z
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programCode {019:006}
projectLead Arlene Anderson
projectNumber EE0010662
projectTitle Building a utility-managed geothermal network in Framingham, Massachusetts and exploring options to integrate renewable energy elements
publisher Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET)
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Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • AmeriGEO
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • CKAN
  • GEO
  • GEOSS
  • National
  • North America
  • United States
  • commgeo
  • community
  • cooling
  • design
  • energy
  • environmental-justice
  • expansion-loop
  • framingham
  • geothermal
  • ground-source-heat-pump
  • gshp
  • heating
  • heet
  • interconnected-loops
  • maintenance
  • massachusetts
  • metering
  • monitoring
  • operations
  • permitting
  • plan
  • report
  • stakeholder
isopen True
license_id cc-by
license_title Creative Commons Attribution
license_url http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by
maintainer Isabel Varela Gutierrez
maintainer_email isabel.varela@heet.org
metadata_created 2025-09-24T19:13:32.865586
metadata_modified 2025-09-24T19:13:32.865595
notes These reports, plans, and drawings review the achievements of Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) and its partners to plan and design a network of interconnected ground-source heat pump systems, or geothermal network, in an area encompassing multiple environmental justice (EJ) neighborhoods in the City of Framingham, MA. The materials provided in this dataset include, a) stakeholder and design best practices, b) study on optimal method to interconnect geothermal loops, c) guidelines for monitoring and metering, d) operations and maintenance plans, e) permitting guidelines and f) 10-day driller tutorial curriculum. These materials can guide the efficient and ethical design of future geothermal networks nationwide. The capacity of the system is estimated at 217 tons and is designed to provide 100% of heating and cooling needs for the buildings connected to the loop. In this project, 80 boreholes are used as the main thermal resources, the distribution system (or loop) consists of 0.61 miles of an 8-inch single-pipe at ambient temperature, with the capacity to connect 44 buildings, including 13 apartment buildings from the Framingham Housing Authority, one transitional home, one school building and 29 single family homes. While Framingham already has a geothermal network loop that is currently in the commissioning stage, our proposed project is unique because it is the first utility-led expansion loop (2nd loop) project that will connect to an adjacent existing geothermal loop (1st loop) in a pre-existing neighborhood. Both the 1st and 2nd loops are being installed, owned and operated by Eversource Energy, the utility Deployment Partner.
num_resources 6
num_tags 31
title Community Geothermal: Planning and Design of a Heating and Cooling System in Framingham, Massachusetts