Geothermal tool "WebEWS" published
The GUT has added a calculation tool to the geothermal portal of the Geological Service NRW.
The Institute of Geomechanics and Underground Technology of RWTH Aachen University has developed a calculation tool for the internet platform "Geothermie in NRW", which simplifies the planning of geothermal installations. The platform www.geothermie.nrw.de is offered by the Geological Survey of North Rhine-Westphalia (GD NRW) on behalf of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Economics and now also provides users with the possibility of fast and automatic dimensioning of geothermal probes and probe fields between 100 and 1,000 meters to cover heating and cooling demands. This is made possible by the newly developed tool "WebEWS".
"Geothermal energy is an essential part of achieving the German net-zero targets and the further developed Geothermal Platform in NRW is a powerful tool to promote this. With our calculation tool, we want to help unlock the potential of geothermal energy, whether for building or district heating and cooling, or even electricity generation," explains the institute's director, Professor Raul Fuentes. WebEWS enables the automatic determination of a suitable geothermal probe installation for user-defined heating and cooling requirements.
In addition to near-surface and medium-depth geothermal energy, the new version of the online portal will in future also provide geothermally relevant information down to depths of more than 5,000 meters. This is particularly important for the heat supply of neighborhoods up to the feed-in of clean geothermal heat into district heating networks. "The portal is an important bridge to the heat transition and is therefore oriented to the needs of the present time: a local, independent, secure and, in particular, climate-friendly heat supply for NRW. With the expansion to include medium-depth and deep geothermal energy, we are making important geo-data available to municipalities, energy suppliers and companies with high heat requirements, thus taking some of the risk out of projects as early as the planning phase," explains GD NRW Director Dr. Ulrich Pahlke.
The development of the calculation tool was made possible by the research project "GeTIS" under the leadership of the RWTH Chair for Energy Efficient Construction. Meanwhile, findings from GeTIS are being further utilized in the ongoing BMWK follow-up project "GeoWaermeWende" focusing on cold local heating.