At present, over half of all primary energy used in Europe is used for heating and cooling. Therefore, decarbonizing the heating supply is essential to achieve climate targets. Underground thermal energy storage is a key enabling technology for the energy transition to buffer the large seasonal mismatch between thermal energy demand and sustainable thermal energy production capabilities. In Delft, a High-Temperature Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (HT-ATES) system will be installed at the campus of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). It will be integrated in the wider heating system on and around the TU Delft campus, which itself is undergoing a transformation to optimally supply sustainable thermal energy. The district heating network will be extended and utilize the thermal energy from a geothermal doublet producing heat at around 75-80°C with a flow rate of ~350m3/hr. Excess energy produced by the geothermal well in summer will be stored in the HT-ATES system, and will be utilised when demand exceeds production throughout the winter. The HT-ATES system will comprise of 7 wells (3 hot wells of 80°C and 4 warm wells of 50°C) to a depth of approximately 200m, with storage in an unconsolidated sedimentary aquifer between 160-200m depth. It is designed so that the instantaneous excess power from the geothermal project can be stored and demand from the district heating network be extracted from the system. The HT-ATES system at TU Delft is partially funded by local stakeholders and the European commission within the PUSH-IT project and has two primary goals: (i) to reduce carbon emissions on TU Delft campus , and (ii) to create a unique demonstration, education and research infrastructure. The complexity of a HT-ATES requires innovative solutions during the entire system life cycle. The scientific programme that is initially planned within the project is therefore focusing on various research fields and includes: - Characterisation of the subsurface formations including mechanical, hydraulic, thermal, and chemical properties. - Evaluation and monitoring of the biological conditions and microbial diversity, and potential impact on water quality. - Innovations in drilling and completion, monitoring and performance. - Quantification of the system performance and system impact during multiple storage cycles and the full lifecycle of the HT-ATES. This will include extensively monitoring temperature distribution and water quality in the subsurface to characterise behaviour and improve models. - Demonstrate and develop the implementation of HT-ATES in an urban setting, including control of the system in the built-environment and transforming the conventional heat network to a future-proof heat network. - To allow access to other universities or institutions with active programmes in the field of Geothermal Science and Engineering to jointly carry out research and perform experiments. -Societal engagement and legal evaluation for improving the just energy transition.@en

The technical and economic success of an Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) system depends strongly on its thermal recovery efficiency, i.e. the ratio of the amount of energy that is recovered to the energy that was injected. Typically, conduction most strongly determines the thermal recovery efficiency of ATES systems at low storage temperatures (<25 °C), while the impact of buoyancy-driven flow can lead to high additional heat losses at high storage temperatures (>50 °C). To date, however, it is unclear how the relative contribution of these processes and mechanical dispersion to heat losses across a broad temperature range is affected by their interaction for the wide range of storage conditions that can be encountered in practice. Since such process-based insights are important to predict ATES performance and support the design phase, numerical thermo-hydraulic ATES simulations were conducted for a wide range of realistic operational storage conditions ([15–90 °C], [50,000–1,000,000 m³/year]) and hydrogeological conditions (aquifer thickness, horizontal hydraulic conductivity, anisotropy). The simulated heat loss fractions of all scenarios were evaluated with respect to analytical solutions to assess the contribution of the individual heat loss processes. Results show that the wide range of heat losses (10–80 % in the 5th year) is the result of varying contributions of conduction, dispersion and buoyancy-driven flow, which are largely determined by the geometry of the storage volume (ratio of screen length / thermal radius, L/R_th) and the potential for buoyancy-driven flow (q₀) as affected by the storage temperature and hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer. For ATES systems where conduction dominates the heat losses, a L/R_th ratio of 2 minimizes the thermal area over volume ratio (A/V) and resulting heat losses for a given storage volume. In contrast however, the impact of dispersion decreases with L/R_th and particularly for ATES systems with a high potential for buoyancy-driven flow (q₀ > 0.05 m/d), increasingly smaller L/R_th ratios (<1) strongly reduce the heat losses due to tilting. Overall, the results of this study support the assessment of thermal recovery efficiencies for particular aquifer and storage conditions, thereby aiding the optimization of initial ATES designs.

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The multi-purpose research borehole at the Delftse Hout is the third of four seismic monitoring locations of the seismic monitoring network for the geothermal research project on the TU Delft campus (Geothermal Delft GTD, also known as DAPwell, https://geothermiedelft.nl/). For the geothermal research project, two deep wells (“a doublet” consisting of an injector and a producer) for geothermal energy extraction will be installed on the TU Delft campus next to the combined heat and power plant (“warmtekrachtcentrale - WKC”). The system will produce geothermal heat to supply the campus of TU Delft and part of the city of Delft.
The herein presented borehole describes the installation of a multi-purpose research borehole (called DAPGEO-02), which was installed in the period February - May 2022. DAPGEO-02 is part of a seismic monitoring system for the shallow and deeper subsurface in the vicinity of the planned geothermal doublet. The locations of all four stations are given in Figure 1. The monitoring network and the related research gathers knowledge about the current status of the subsurface on the basis of periodic data measurements, and possible seasonal effects.
Within the seismic monitoring network, three seismic monitoring stations have already been installed, respectively DAPGEO-01 on the proposed location of the geothermal project near the Leeghwaterstraat in Delft, DAPGEO-03 on the Kerkpolderweg in Delft, and ZH03 in on the Ackersdijkseweg in Pijnacker-Nootdorp (installed and equipped by KNMI).@en

Low temperature (<25 °C) Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) systems have a world-wide potential to provide low-carbon space heating and cooling for buildings by using heat pumps combined with the seasonal subsurface storage and recovery of heated and cooled groundwater. ATES systems increasingly utilize aquifer space, decreasing the overall primary energy use for heating and cooling for an urban area. However, subsurface interaction may negatively affect the energy performance of individual buildings with existing ATES systems. In this study, it is investigated how aquifer utilization levels, obtained by varying well placement policies, affect subsurface interaction between ATES systems and how this in turn affects individual primary energy use. To this end, a building climate installation model is developed and integrated with a MODFLOW-MT3DMS thermal groundwater model. For the spatial distribution and thermal requirements of 26 unique buildings as present in the city centre of Utrecht, the placement of ATES wells is varied using an agent-based modelling approach applying dense and spacious placement restrictions. Within these simulations ATES adoption order and well placement location is randomized. Well placement density is varied for 9 scenarios by changing the distance between wells of the same and the opposite type. The results of this study show that the applied dense well placement policies lead to a 30% increase of ATES adoption and hence overall GHG emission reduction improved with maximum 60% compared to conventional heating and cooling. The primary energy use of individual ATES systems is affected at varying well placement policies by two mechanisms. Firstly, at denser well placement, ATES systems are able to place more wells, which increases the capacity of their ATES system, thereby decreasing their electricity and gas use. Secondly, aquifer utilization increases with denser well placement policies and thus interaction between individual ATES increases. At subsurface utilization up to 80%, individual primary energy use does not change significantly due to subsurface interaction. At aquifer utilization level > 80%, both negative and positive interaction is observed. Negative interaction between wells of the opposite type leads to an increase of gas or electricity use up to 15% compared to spacious well placement. On the other side, buildings may experience a maximum decrease of 15% electricity use at dense well placement due to positive interaction between wells of the same type. Local conditions like building location, plot size, distance to other buildings and heating/cooling demand determine the specific effect per building. The optimal well placement policy result from the aquifer utilisation levels discussed above. Maximum GHG emission reduction while maintaining individual ATES system performance, is achieved with well distances of 0.5–1 times the yearly average thermal radius for wells of the same type (cold-cold and warm-warm). Opposite well types (cold-warm) should be placed apart ∼2 times the thermal radius to prevent negative subsurface interaction.

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In order to assess the thermo-hydraulic modelling capabilities of various geothermal simulators, a comparative test suite was created, consisting of a set of cases designed with conditions relevant to the low-enthalpy range of geothermal operations within the European HEATSTORE research project. In an effort to increase confidence in the usage of each simulator, the suite was used as a benchmark by a set of 10 simulators of diverse origin, formulation, and licensing characteristics: COMSOL, MARTHE, ComPASS, Nexus-CSMP++, MOOSE, SEAWATv4, CODE_BRIGHT, Tough3, PFLOTRAN, and Eclipse 100. The synthetic test cases (TCs) consist of a transient pressure test verification (TC1), a well-test comparison (TC2), a thermal transport experiment validation (TC3), and a convection onset comparison (TC4), chosen to represent well-defined subsets of the coupled physical processes acting in subsurface geothermal operations. The results from the four test cases were compared among the participants, to known analytical solutions, and to experimental measurements where applicable, to establish them as reference expectations for future studies. A basic description, problem specification, and corresponding results are presented and discussed. Most participating simulators were able to perform most tests reliably at a level of accuracy that is considered sufficient for application to modelling tasks in real geothermal projects. Significant relative deviations from the reference solutions occurred where strong, sudden (e.g. initial) gradients affected the accuracy of the numerical discretization, but also due to sub-optimal model setup caused by simulator limitations (e.g. providing an equation of state for water properties).

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The fossil-based energy system is transitioning towards a renewable energy system. One important aspect is the spatial and temporal mismatch between intermitted supply and continuous demand. To ensure a reliable and affordable energy system, we propose an integrated system approach that integrates electricity production, mobility, heating of buildings and water management with a major role for storage and conversion. The minimization of energy transport in such an integrated system indicates the need for local optimization. This study focuses on a comparison between different novel system designs for neighborhood energy and water systems with varying modes of system integration, including all-electric, power-to-heat and power-to-hydrogen. A simulation model is developed to determine the energy and water balance and carry out economic analysis to calculate the system costs of various scenarios. We show that system costs are the lowest in a scenario that combines a hydrogen boiler and heat pumps for household heating; or a power-to-X system that combines power-to-heat, seasonal heat storage, and power-to-hydrogen (2070 €/household/year). Scenarios with electricity as the main energy carrier have higher retrofitting costs for buildings (insulation + heat pump), which leads to higher system costs (2320–2370 €/household/year) than more integrated systems. We conclude that diversification in energy carriers can contribute to a smooth transition of existing residential areas.@en

In the energy transition, multi-energy systems are crucial to reduce the temporal, spatial and functional mismatch between sustainable energy supply and demand. Technologies as power-to-heat (PtH) allow flexible and effective utilisation of available surplus green electricity when integrated with seasonal heat storage options. However, insights and methods for integration of PtH and seasonal heat storage in multi-energy systems are lacking. Therefore, in this study, we developed methods for improved integration and control of a high temperature aquifer thermal energy storage (HT-ATES) system within a decentralized multi-energy system. To this end, we expanded and integrated a multi-energy system model with a numerical hydro-thermal model to dynamically simulate the functioning of several HT-ATES system designs for a case study of a neighbourhood of 2000 houses. Results show that the integration of HT-ATES with PtH allows 100% provision of the yearly heat demand, with a maximum 25% smaller heat pump than without HT-ATES. Success of the system is partly caused by the developed mode of operation whereby the heat pump lowers the threshold temperature of the HT-ATES, as this increases HT-ATES performance and decreases the overall costs of heat production. Overall, this study shows that the integration of HT-ATES in a multi-energy system is suitable to match annual heat demand and supply, and to increase local sustainable energy use.@en