‘High Temperature Underground Thermal Energy Storage’, HEATSTORE for short, is a second GEOTHERMICA project in which Geo-Energie Suisse will participate.

The 24 partners involved in HEATSTORE, from 9 countries, have complementary skills and roles. The HEATSTORE consortium is made up of a mixture of scientific research institutes and private companies. Industrial commitment is considered to be an undeniable and relevant advantage, crucial to the success of HEATSTORE. The combination of large European research institutes with small, medium and large industrial companies will ensure that proven technologies can be brought to market and promoted by the project stakeholders.

Thermal energy storage technologies must be perfected and become an integral part of the future infrastructure of energy systems, in order to absorb fluctuations in energy availability and demand. The main objectives of HEATSTORE are to reduce costs, reduce risks, improve the performance of high temperature underground energy storage technologies (~25 to ~90 °C) (HT-UTES) and optimise the demand management of heating networks. This is being achieved in particular through 6 new pilot projects and 8 case studies of existing systems with different configurations of heat sources, accumulation and utilisation. The results of the HEATSTORE project will promote the profitability of HT-UTES technologies and, through an optimised balance between supply, transport, storage and demand, will enable geothermal energy production to reach its maximum application potential within the framework of the European and Swiss energy shift.

The HEATSTORE project will enable heat storage systems to be accepted more quickly by the European market, by encouraging the development of the demonstration phase up to commercial use within 2 to 5 years and by providing an overview of the potential for use by 2030-2050.

HEATSTORE primarily deals with the topic of ‘Supply and intelligent integration into the energy system’, with a multidisciplinary approach that includes geological characterisation, risk management, technical aspects, commercial development, regulation, economic evaluation, control of environmental impacts and the involvement of partners.

Geo-Energie Suisse is indirectly involved in the HEATSTORE project through Energie Wasser Bern (ewb) pilot geothermal storage project at the Forsthaus site in Bern. The Bern project is one of six new demonstration projects in the HEATSTORE project, which also began in early summer 2018.