In the small Bavarian town of Gerretsried, the Canadian energy company Eavor Technologies has implemented a bold geothermal project that could become the foundation for sustainable energy supply in the future.
The project does not rely on the search for natural geothermal sources, which are not available everywhere, but creates its own — artificial, economical, efficient, and endless.
Implemented by Canadians in Gerretsried, the project entered commercial mode in December, providing the city with heat for heating and steam for the operation of the power plant. It is expected that over the course of a year, the artificially created well in the ground will help generate 8.2 MW of electricity and 64 MW of thermal energy. This is the world's first implementation of a bold technology with an extensive system of horizontal wells.
A similar technology is used in the U.S. by Fervo Energy. Both drill two vertical shafts with depths ranging from 3 to 5 km, and then switch to horizontal drilling of shafts up to 3 km long. The difference in implementation is that the Canadians drill several parallel shafts that fork out from the vertical shaft. In the case of Fervo Energy, which has already created one project to power a Google data center, only one shaft branches off from the vertical shafts.
According to the Canadian developers, horizontal drilling was very challenging and required up to 100 days to complete each shaft. As the drilling process improved, they managed to complete two shafts in 20 days while operating a pair of drilling rigs simultaneously.
After the drilling is completed, any available water is supplied to one of the vertical wells. It is heated at depth and then flows back to the surface through another well, where it releases heat and goes back underground for reheating. Once the wells are filled with water, there is virtually no operational consumption. There is also no need for pumps to inject water, which saves energy.
The implementation of the project became possible thanks to European grants for renewable energy and due to Germany's catastrophic situation in fossil energy. It is important to note that geothermal energy remains permitted for development also in the U.S., where Donald Trump nearly buried all "green" energy with his decrees. Therefore, geothermal methods of extracting heat and electricity have every chance to develop into widespread commercial use, and analysts are already predicting growth in this market to many billions of dollars per year.
Leave a comment