Technologies for geothermal to enhance competitiveness in smart and flexible operation

Geo-Smart will focus on strategic technology developments to make geothermal heat and power more flexible and therefore competitive with its counterparts based on fossil fuel. Some of the major issues to achieving this is the variability in the energy demand requirements from the respective power grids. The GeoSmart thermal energy storage concept will eliminate the operational challenges related to both technical and economical aspects of geothermal energy regarding flexible operation. GeoSmart thermal energy storage will be built on using phase change material (PCM) based thermal energy storage (latent heat), and hot water storage (sensible heat), which can be integrated in any geothermal installation covering almost the whole range of brine spectrum. Depending on the geothermal power plant type, there will be 4 types of GeoSmart storage whose functionalities will not vary by too much, but operational mode might change a little. GeoSmart will also develop a hybrid cooling concept for the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) installations in order to increase electrical efficiency. Finally, Silica scaling is the most common problem associated with geothermal utilization. A method of reducing this has been demonstrated at small-scale in the Nesjavellir plant in Iceland. The GeoSmart consortium is aiming to commercialize this method to further increase the energy efficiency of geothermal power plants.