May 2022 - GeoFIT

GEOFIT Project (Deployment of novel GEOthermal systems, technologies and tools for energy efficient building retroFITting) will participate in the GeoTHERM Expo & Congress 2022.

This event, to be held on June 2^nd & 3^rd, 2022, in Offenburg (Germany), is the Europe’s largest geothermal trade fair with congress focused on current developments in the industry and creating a platform dedicated exclusively to the topic of geothermal energy. At the on-site trade fair, an average of 3,600 trade visitors and 200 exhibitors from over 40 nations are expected.

One of the keys to having more energy efficient buildings is to be able to retrofit their cooling and heating systems to systems that use renewable energies as their main energy supply. Surface or shallow geothermal energy stands out for its great capacity to offer significant energy savings and reduction of greenhouse gases, emerging as one of the options with the greatest potential for implementation in the energy retrofitting of existing buildings. Leading European associations within the sector, such as the European Construction, built environment and energy efficient building Technology Platform (https://www.ectp.org/) and the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Renewable Heating & Cooling (RHC) (https://www.rhc-platform.org/) promote its deployment in order to develop and exploit Europe’s geothermal potential.

GEOFIT is an EU-funded innovation project aiming to develop and deploy cost-effective Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) on energy efficient building retrofitting, focused on removing barriers to the deployment of this renewable energy in the cooling and heating systems of existing buildings, contributing to achieving European targets for carbon emission reduction, energy consumption and energy efficiency. The project started in May 2018, has 24 partners at European level and a budget of almost €10 million.

In the fourth year of the project, Comet Global Innovation, the Communication and Dissemination leader of the project, along with the coordinator R2M Solution, want to show the progress of GEOFIT at the GeoTHERM. GEOFIT, besides having a stand dedicated to the technologies developed, will also count with participation of the partners GROENHOLLAND and AIT to present the project results along with the new configurations of ground heat exchangers for shallow geothermal energy and the innovative ground source heat pumps. In addition, the experiences of the demos carried out in Sant Cugat (Spain), Perugia (Italy), Bordeaux (France) and Aran (Ireland) will also be presented.

Shallow Geothermal Energy – GEOFIT (Easy-to-install, economical and enhanced geothermal systems for energy efficient building retrofitting) – Abstract

The Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), Austria’s largest non-university research organization, has a business unit called ‘Thermal Energy System’ specialized on the development of heat pumps and thermal storages on both component and system level, and their integration into industrial processes, buildings and thermal networks. Within Geofit project, AIT is leading the development and demonstration of the electrically driven heat pump prototypes especially for the optimized integration of the newly developed ground heat exchangers and the test of cost-efficient alternative heat exchangers.

Edith Haslinger has been one of the main scientists involved in the optimization of the ground heat exchangers, working together with Groenholland. She is senior scientist at AIT and Project Manager for geothermal projects, both for deep and shallow geothermal and collaborates with industry, other research institutions and also technical offices. Through this interview, she explains how she landed in the field of geothermal energy by pure chance and her experience collaborating in Geofit, her first EU project, which she defines as a really positive project for the scientific community because one really sees that your ideas and visions for projects become real through the demonstration sites, and how these ideas really make a difference for people.

…the most interesting aspect of working with geothermal technologies is that geothermal is not a one uniform homogeneous field of knowledge, it is rather a combination of different fields and subjects. You have drilling, engineering, technical, geology, chemistry, political, social and economic aspects… so for successful geothermal projects you really have to combine all these fields and experience. This is the most interesting, working with different people, with other perspectives, different ideas, and everybody working together with a common goal…

Month: May 2022

GEOFIT will participate in the GeoTHERM EXPO & CONGRESS held on June 2 & 3, 2022 in Offenburg, Germany

Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and Women in Geothermal, fifth interview of the series with Edith Haslinger

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