Smart use of geothermal electricity and heating and cooling in the energy system

Geothermal as backbone of a heating grid including geological thermal storage facilities as system support. Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Geothermal energy will be widely deployed and competitively priced, underpinned with reduced capital, operational and maintenance costs. Geothermal and geological thermal storage facilities as support system will be a backbone of the heating grid .
• Improved system integration of geothermal heat and power plants coping with changing demand for electricity, heat and cooling and intermittent renewable power generation.
• Enhanced operation flexibility of a geothermal heat and power plant by improving substantially key performance indicators: ramp rate & start-up time, power & heat operation range, overload capability.
• Implementation of smart control system aiming at optimizing plant operation by taking into account various control parameters (current and anticipated) such as demand (power & heat), price signals, flexibility of demand, ancillary grid services, renewable generation, etc.

Projects are expected to:

• Demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of responding to commands from a grid or network operator, at any time, to increase or decrease output ramp up and down. -demonstrate the automatic generation control (load following / ride-through capabilities to grid specifications) and ancillary services of geothermal power plants Address flexible heating and/or cooling supplied from binary cycles or EGS plants, including coupling with renewable energy sources.
• Increase variable demand of heating, cooling and electricity by integration of adequate installations and equipment such as heat pumps, energy piles, energy sheet pile walls, ORC turbo-expanders, heat exchanger networks, hot and cold reservoirs (e.g. geothermal storage, UTES).

Actions are expected to consider the development of transmission and distribution infrastructure, and the interplay with other flexibility options (e.g. demand-side management and storage), and test on dispatchability leading to AI-based smart thermal grids balancing generation and demand. The flexible generation should be able to provide additional services to the grid such as inertial services/peak power, role in electricity balancing/reserve market. Projects should integrate increased diagnostics on components for performance/reliability monitoring (maintaining high level of heat transfer – durability, fouling issues…).

Plans for the exploitation and dissemination of results for proposals submitted under this topic should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. The exploitation plans should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan, financial model) indicating the possible funding sources to be potentially used (in particular the Innovation Fund).

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.