Imagine a giant thermos buried in the ground that can save heat from the summer or from wind turbines to use during a freezing winter. This project is building seven of these massive heat batteries across Europe to make city heating systems independent of fossil fuels. It's like creating a massive energy bank that stores heat when it's cheap and releases it when it's needed most.
City heating networks struggle to integrate intermittent renewable energy because they lack massive, cost-effective storage. This leads to continued reliance on fossil fuels to meet peak winter demand.
Seven large-scale pit thermal energy storage demonstrators and numerical simulation tools for performance evaluation.
If you are a municipal energy utility dealing with high carbon emissions and intermittent renewable heat — this project developed 7 demonstrators that provide a roadmap for integrating large-scale storage. This allows you to stabilize heat supply and move toward 100% sustainable networks.
If you are a civil engineering firm dealing with high costs and technical risks in underground construction — this project developed improved building processes and components. This reduces the financial risk and technical uncertainty when digging large thermal pits.
If you are an energy service provider dealing with volatile energy prices for industrial clients — this project developed numerical simulation tools to evaluate performance. This helps you design more cost-effective heat storage systems for factories.
The project focuses on improving cost effectiveness by developing better components and refining the design and building processes across 7 demonstrators. Based on available project data, it uses shared knowledge from the complete value chain to lower expenses.
Yes, the project is demonstrating 7 large-scale pits in 5 countries and aims to provide guidelines for the roll-out of over 1500 to 2000 such systems across Europe.
Based on available project data, the results will be made publicly available to serve as guidelines for future initiatives and satellite projects.
The project maps and discusses viable solutions for permitting and social challenges with a group of 15 satellite initiatives and other market-oriented partners.
It uses numerical simulation tools validated by monitoring data from operating systems to evaluate how these storages integrate into district heating and industrial networks.
The consortium is heavily weighted toward commercial application, with 13 industry partners (57% ratio) and 10 SMEs. This mix of component suppliers, building companies, and energy utilities across 7 countries ensures that the technical developments are aligned with market needs and the entire value chain.
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