Fri, 07 June, 2024
A thermal energy storage system has been installed at the Insheim geothermal power plant in Germany.
Project GeoSmart’s excellence lies in the optimisation and demonstration of innovations to improve the flexibility of geothermal power plants, specifically via energy storage systems that provide daily flexibility. These innovative storage solutions have been designed to be integrated at demonstration sites in Kizildere 2 in Turkey and Insheim in Germany.
Overview of the Insheim Demonstration site
The geothermal power plant located in Insheim is part of the Upper Rhine Graben, a geological structure providing hot geothermal fluid from below the surface, which is used to generate electricity.
The Upper Rhine Graben is a large geological structure with a length of 300 km and a width of 30 km that formed in the Cenozoic period and extends from Basel in Switzerland to Mainz in Germany. Innsheim geothermal power plant, one of the two demo sites for the GeoSmart project, is one of the first operating plants in the Upper Rhine Graben. This means it benefits from the experience of being a first technological development with almost 10 years of operational knowledge. This power plant is operated by The Natürlich Insheim GmbH (VNI) was founded in 2022 as part of the Vulcan Energy Resources GmbH.
Demonstration of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) in Insheim
The TES designed for the installation at Insheim site is aimed at compensating for peaks in the demand for district heating supply, as well as being used as a redundancy provision during shutdowns and adding variability to the Oragnic Rankine Cycle production.
Thanks to the team effort from partners CEA, NALDEO, VNI and TWI, after months of hard work, the system is now installed at VNI with commissioning planned in coming months…
The GeoSmart project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 818576.