The well has been installed by Geothermal Engineering, which is being backed by £800,000 of funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and £100,000 by the company’s founders.
The test has been running at the Rosemanowes quarry site near Falmouth in Cornwall in recent weeks, exploiting a borehole previously drilled to a depth of 2.5km in the 1980s as part of an abandoned geothermal project.
Mr Law said the pilot scheme aimed to provide direct warmth rather than electricity using heat exchange systems by flowing water through rocks at a temperature of 65 to 75 degrees centigrade.
He suggests that up to 500 kilowatts – enough to heat 400 apartments – could be available from wells costing about £1.4m if newly drilled.
