SOLUTION / PUBLIC SOURCE RECORD
Ruden creates “underground batteries” from waste heat
- Published 7 July 2022; updated 21 September 2026; estimated reading time 2 minutes. Listed under Battery / Integration and Energy / Waste heat and Geothermal energy.
- Ruden’s HEAT (High Enthalpy Aquifer Technology) stores industrial waste heat seasonally in fractured bedrock. Ruden maps and models subsurface fractures, then cements/enhances them to create a reservoir beneath a plant. Water circulating through fissures transfers heat into the rock for later recovery. The page says the process has no emissions and minimal storage loss, and is suited to facilities with steady high waste-heat output, including waste-incineration plants; surplus district heat can also be stored.
- The article cites a US Department of Energy estimate that 20–50% of industrial energy output is lost as waste heat. It presents recovery as a way to lower energy costs and emissions while increasing the productive use of industrial and district-heating energy.
- Market context estimates EU waste-heat-recovery potential at about 300 TWh per year. Ruden was founded in 2007, operates in Norway and abroad, and says its LEAT system is installed on several Norwegian projects while a large-scale iHEAT system for renewable-energy storage was being developed.
- Linked to SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) and SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure) for storing otherwise-lost heat and lowering industrial carbon emissions.
- Contact: Helene Ree Ruden, Director, helene@rudenas.com. Company: RUDEN AS, Mariusbakken 1D, 1628 Engelsviken, Norway; rudenas.com. A phone-number reveal control is present.