Small German town starts testing geothermal power utilizing new techniques
12 comments
·March 4, 2025retromario
Geretsried (the town) apparently sits in an ideal location for geothermal power and heat plants, in the same basin as Munich and other surrounding municipalities who have been leveraging geothermal energy to great effect.
https://geothermie-allianz.de/en/geothermal-in-bavaria/
I'm surprised we don't see more such projects.
Archelaos
For more details what already exists, there is a map of deep geothermal power plants in the "Energie-Atlas Bayern" (in German) published by the government of Bavaria:
https://www.karten.energieatlas.bayern.de/start/?c=677751,54...
The "Energie-Atlas Bayern" includes also maps of other kinds of geothermal installations.
- A map of downhole heat exchangers:
https://www.karten.energieatlas.bayern.de/start/?c=677751,54...
- A map of groundwater heat pumps:
https://www.karten.energieatlas.bayern.de/start/?c=677751,54...
lqet
> I'm surprised we don't see more such projects.
The main reason why geothermal drilling has a difficult stand in Germany is the case of Staufen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau#Geothermal...
barbazoo
> The cause for this geological change has been identified as a drilling operation conducted in the summer and autumn of 2007 to provide geothermal heating to the city hall.
That project was about transferring heat. Perhaps for geothermal electricity production which can happen away from population centres this is less of an issue?
maxhille
There is no "away from population centres" in central europe
fifilura
There is a huge difference between "Geothermal Energy" technologies.
The project in Staufen seems to be about a heat pump, which is a really simple technology that can be used pretty much everywhere. The problem seems to be that the drilling hole hit a gypsum layer that started swelling. But this should be pretty easy to know if it is in an area at risk.
Lots of houses here in Sweden has this technology, my house has, and it is a 2 day project to drill a 150m hole for a standalone house and install the heat pump, maybe $20-30k investment.
Wikipedia claims Sweden is #2 in the world for geothermal energy, but it is because of these simple heat pumps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heating#Application...
Heat pumps do not rely on hot water springs, it mainly just recycles old heat from the sun that has been stored in the ground over the season(s).
The project in the article talks about hot spring geothermal energy, which is more complex because it requires drilling holes several kilometers deep.
barbazoo
Where it's feasible it might be cost. Perhaps it's still cheaper to pollute than to implement projects like this.
toomuchtodo
Map of Europe indicating where geothermal district heating resources are available: https://map.hugeo.hu/geo_DH/
Manual: https://web.archive.org/web/20240619080217/http://geodh.eu/w...
kieranmaine
Some extra information on cost:
"According to Robert Winsloe, Eavor’s executive vice-president of origination, the company expects its AGS technology to achieve an LCOE of $75/MWh by 2029–2030"
https://www.eavor.com/blog/eavors-innovation-promises-signif...
belorn
It is an interesting test, but I wish they could provide a bit more details. Doing some searches it seems that this is a €350 million project, for which €100 millions is direct grants given by the government, and the remaining are special loans given out by different green investment initiatives. It is planned to generate 8.2 MW of electrical output (in practice they intend to divert some for heating, which mean less total electrical output but with higher amount of usable energy).
If you like small german towns, new power plants, and time travel you should watch Dark