Borehole thermal energy storage (BTES). First results from the injection phase of a living lab in Torino (NW Italy)

Giordano, Nicolò; Comina, Cesare; Mandrone, Giuseppe; Cagni, A.

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2015.08.052

Cited by 49 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…scale electrical measurements performed by Giordano et al (2016b) and is based on timelapse ERT surveys conducted at a BTES site. A field-scale BTES living lab was built up in Grugliasco, near the Topography Department of the University of Torino (Giordano et al, 2016a). The living lab has been working since April 2014.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging of the thermally affected zone of a Borehole Thermal Energy Storage system near Torino (Northern Italy)

Giordano

Arato²,

Comina

et al. 2017

Journal of Applied Geophysics

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A Borehole Thermal Energy Storage living lab was built up nearby Torino (Northern Italy). This living lab aims at testing the ability of the alluvial deposits of the northwestern Po Plain to store the thermal energy collected by solar thermal panels and the efficiency of energy storage systems in this climatic context. Different monitoring approaches have been tested and analyzed since the start of the thermal injection in April 2014. Underground temperature monitoring is constantly undertaken by means of several temperature sensors located along the borehole heat exchangers and within the hydraulic circuit. Nevertheless, this can provide only pointwise information about underground temperature distribution. For this reason, a geophysical approach is proposed in order to image the thermally affected zone (TAZ) caused by the heat injection: surface electrical resistivity measurements were carried out with this purpose. In the present paper, results of time-lapse daily acquisitions are reported with the aim of imaging the thermal plume evolution within the subsoil. Resistivity data, calibrated on local temperature measurements, have shown their potentiality in imaging the heated plume of the system and depicting its evolution within the day. Different types of data processing were adopted in order to face issues mainly related to a highly urbanized environment. The use of apparent resistivity proved to be in valid agreement with the results of different inversion approaches. The inversion processes did not significantly improve the qualitative and quantitative TAZ imaging in comparison to the pseudo-sections. This suggested the usefulness of apparent resistivity data alone for a rough monitoring of TAZ in this kind of applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging of the thermally affected zone of a Borehole Thermal Energy Storage system near Torino (Northern Italy)

Giordano

Arato²,

Comina

et al. 2017

Journal of Applied Geophysics

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“…The results presented in this paper refers to a single injection day during the first working summer (31 July 2014). The wintertime circulation is not described here because considered not important for the purpose of the paper, further detailed information can be found in [31,32].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is a common problem that needs to be faced when building an appropriate numerical model for a real test site. From the analysis of the drilling data related to the construction of the BHEs, and given the general geological setting of the area, the Grugliasco test site can be considered relatively homogeneous from the stratigraphic and hydrogeological point of view [31]. Therefore, the physical properties of the solid matrix and of the interstitial fluid (Table 2) were assigned to the entire studied volume, without vertical and/or lateral variations (homogeneity assumption).…”

Section: Numerical Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The present paper aims at comparing and discussing the use of direct monitoring, numerical modelling and time-lapse 3D ERT to image the short-time spatial evolution of the temperature anomaly distribution within an underground unsaturated geological formation subjected to heat injection. The heat source generating the temperature anomaly is a borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) living lab [31]. Several 3D ERT acquisitions carried out during a single day of operation of the plant were inverted to quantitatively image the time-lapse variation induced by the underground TAZ evolution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Time-Lapse 3D Electric Tomography for Short-time Monitoring of an Experimental Heat Storage System

et al. 2019

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A borehole thermal energy storage living lab was built nearby Torino (Northern Italy). The aim of this living lab is to test the ability of the alluvial deposits of the north-western Po Plain to store the thermal energy collected by solar panels. Monitoring the temperature distribution induced in the underground and the effectiveness of the heat storage in this climatic context is not an easy task. For this purpose, different temperature evolution strategies are compared in this paper: Local temperature measurements, numerical simulations and geophysical surveys. These different approaches were compared during a single day of operation of the living lab. The results of this comparison allowed to underline the effectiveness of time-lapse 3D electric resistivity tomography as a non-invasive and cost-effective qualitative heat monitoring tool. This was obtained even in a test site with unfavorable thermo-hydrogeological conditions and high-level anthropic noise. Moreover, the present study demonstrated that, if properly calibrated with local temperature values, time-lapse 3D electric resistivity tomography also provides a quantitative estimation of the underground temperature.

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“…Examples of seasonal BTES systems where solar heat is the energy supplied to the system, for which system design and performance have been presented in detail, are the BTES at Anneberg, Sweden [9], Neckarsulm, Germany [10], and The Drake Landing Solar Community in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada [11]. In recent years, experimental facilities have been used to better understand the underground thermal behaviour of these systems, e.g., in [12][13][14], where for example various charging and discharging strategies have been tested. Some research has also used numerical models to predict and investigate the performance of BTES for the storage of solar energy, including [5,15,16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical Validation and Numerical Predictions of an Industrial Borehole Thermal Energy Storage System

Nilsson¹,

Rohdin²

2019

Energies

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To generate performance predictions of borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) systems for both seasonal and short-term storage of industrial excess heat, e.g., from high to low production hours, models are needed that can handle the short-term effects. In this study, the first and largest industrial BTES in Sweden, applying intermittent heat injection and extraction down to half-day intervals, was modelled in the IDA ICE 4.8 environment and compared to three years of measured storage performance. The model was then used in a parametric study to investigate the change in performance of the storage from e.g., borehole spacing and storage supply flow characteristics at heat injection. For the three-year comparison, predicted and measured values for total injected and extracted energy differed by less than 1% and 3%, respectively and the mean relative difference for the storage temperatures was 4%, showing that the performance of large-scale BTES with intermittent heat injection and extraction can be predicted with high accuracy. At the actual temperature of the supply flow during heat injection, 40 °C, heat extraction would not exceed approximately 100 MWh/year for any investigated borehole spacing, 1–8 m. However, when the temperature of the supply flow was increased to 60–80 °C, 1400–3100 MWh/year, also dependent on the flow rate, could be extracted at the spacing yielding the highest heat extraction, which in all cases was 3–4 m.

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Borehole thermal energy storage (BTES). First results from the injection phase of a living lab in Torino (NW Italy)

Cited by 49 publications

References 29 publications

Time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging of the thermally affected zone of a Borehole Thermal Energy Storage system near Torino (Northern Italy)

Time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging of the thermally affected zone of a Borehole Thermal Energy Storage system near Torino (Northern Italy)

Time-Lapse 3D Electric Tomography for Short-time Monitoring of an Experimental Heat Storage System

Empirical Validation and Numerical Predictions of an Industrial Borehole Thermal Energy Storage System

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