
Framingham, Massachusetts UTEN Pilot Project Overview
Mark Metzner, part of the HEET and MIT team behind the geothermal networks course, walks through the Utility Thermal Energy Network pilot built in Framingham, Massachusetts. He covers how the project came together as a collaboration between a gas utility and HEET, the engineering behind a shared ground source loop connecting homes and businesses on one street, and the practical lessons learned from installation and early operation. The talk is a session from MIT's IAP 2025 course on geothermal energy networks, and Metzner reflects candidly on what worked, what surprised the team, and what the pilot suggests about scaling networked geothermal heating and cooling to replace gas infrastructure in dense New England towns. It is a short, specific case study rather than a general introduction, aimed at viewers already following the course's broader argument for thermal energy networks.