This technology is a cutting edge renewable energy source and unlike its clean energy counterparts it doesn’t rely on the sun shining or the wind blowing.  

Yass resident and air conditioning specialist, Touie Smith Jnr, views it as a revolutionary source of energy for the future and has been one of the first in his field to use it in Australia. 

Mr Smith was first intrigued by geothermal research five years ago with the ever-increasing electricity costs.

He said he was attracted to the concept because it looked to be an alternative heating option, not only saving his clients money - based on equivalent house size and power usage - but also offering a ‘cleaner’ way of producing energy.  

A geothermal energy system runs liquid or gas through underground pipes, picking up the heat stored just below the surface of the earth. Essentially, the deeper one goes, the hotter the rocks become.

“While normal air conditioning units move heat from outside in, geothermal extracts that heat from the ground and draws it up,” he explained.   

“We do this by putting a heat exchanger in the ground which sends down a refrigerant at around -10 degrees.

"It extracts heat from the ground, put through a heat pump unit in the house, which is then converted into heat."

Although the installation is expensive it has proved to be around 70 per cent cheaper to run. 

Mr Smith was one of the first people to use this form of technology in Australia and the very first in the Canberra region. Taking over the refrigeration and air conditioning business from his father in 2006, Mr Smith's transition to geothermal technology was not as simple as extracting heat from the ground. 

“It was extremely expensive,” he explained. 

“And dumb. I guess I was young and dumb.

“I just thought, well, I’m just going to have to give it a go. No one was doing it and I could see it was something that was on the horizon.

“We had a great business already established, if we weren't in the position we were in we wouldn't have had the means to do it.”

The geothermal horizon for Australia is still years away, with only a selective number of companies able to provide this service.

“I did all the research myself and we spent a lot of money on modifications,” he said.

“While this industry is massive in North America and Europe, it is still quite young in Australia. 

“It was a tough industry to break into, people didn't want to give up their information on how it works and what they were doing. We were eventually able to team up with an Australian manufacturer and not only is our clientele growing, so is the industry.”  

With society's growing desire for control, Mr Smith has incorporated the evolving technology of Apple's i-Phone or i-Pad to monitor and regulate their systems away from home.   

Mr Smith is constantly looking for new research to stay on top of the industry, finding new ways of using clean energy both effectively and efficiently. The technology allowing for the byproduct of the geothermal cooling system to heat a hot water system.

“It is complicated and I realised quite early that it's not going to be handed to me on a plate. I have to take the initiative and so far it has paid off,” he said.