Events

Taking the advantage of the pending visit to the Irish pilot sites in Galway and Aran Islands, the GEOFIT consortium organized its last General Assembly last week, from 5^th to 7^th October, in the University of Galway. It was time to look back at all the work done in the last 4,5 years and try to pack everything up.

During the first day, the consortium had the opportunity to visit the drilling site of the geothermal retrofitting of the Kingfisher Sports Centre of the University of Galway. The University campus is already part of Galway’s decarbonization zone, which is aggressively targeting a 51% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and to decarbonize the campus by 2050.

Site works started in September 2022 on the lawn in front of the Alice Perry Engineering Building with 17 boreholes for a thermal network of underground pipes as part of a dual source ground-air heat pump system. GEOFIT will extract heat from the ground and feed two heat pumps to generate hot water which will be carried through an existing district heating network of underground pipes to warm the University swimming pool in the Sports Centre.

Project discussions focused on the work to be completed before the end of the project and results obtained from the life cycle assessment and life cycle cost of the geothermal systems installed in the five demonstration sites, performed in this last stage. We also discussed about last events and communication activities that are being made for the project; despite the short time left, we have our last external training, and several partners are attending the European Geothermal Congress held in Berlin next 17^th – 21^st October. GEOFIT website will be alive after the project and will contain all public materials drafted that can be helpful for those who want to learn more about enhanced geothermal systems specifically designed for retrofitting, as well as training programs.

Finally, the consortium visited the Aran Islands, where GEOFIT has one of its pilots. There, we could see the whole retrofitting carried out in one of the common houses we can find in the island. Retrofitting includes envelope insulation and low temperature heating geothermal system (floor heating and ventilation). Some technicians from the consortium checked the meters and fixed some monitoring issues raised during the last weeks.

Thank you all for the great meeting!

The GEOFIT Consortium celebrated its 9^th General Assembly in Sant Cugat for three days attending the European Shallow Geothermal Days, on the 14^th of June as part of the external communication activities of the project and the other two days for the presentation and summary of the project since the last General Assembly. The Municipality (Ajuntament) of Sant Cugat, organized the General Assembly to show another milestone within the project, this time in the demo site of the Pins del Vallés School, which is now commissioned and operating. We had the chance to visit the demo site premises and see the field where the boreholes and ground source heat exchangers have been performed and the technical room where the different equipment and systems are installed. 

The partners presented their progress regarding the different work packages and explained the work done during the last months after the 8^th General Assembly held in Perugia in December 2021. 

Now the different Work Packages and deliverables are in a final stage according to the work plan and they will be finished during the next 6 months before the end of the project in October 2022. The meeting was focused on the demo sites progress and it was shown the status of Perugia, Sant Cugat, and Aran as they are now being monitored to provide data about the performance of GEOFIT systems, and the Galway demo site status was also explained by the University of Galway in terms of the coming work to make the drillings and install the proper heating systems for the pool energy demand. Regarding the Sant Cugat demo site, the passive cooling system will be finally installed in July 2022. 

The parallel events planned to disseminate the project have been initiated in 2022, the attendance to the GeoTHERM Expo & Congress by GROENHOLLAND, AIT, and UPONOR has been the first milestone in the series of events to attend, followed by the European Shallow Geothermal Days and will be closed with the participation in the Conference on Modern Materials and Technologies (Perugia, June’22), the European Conference on Structural Control (Warsaw, July’22) and the European Geothermal Congress (Berlin, October’22).  

The GEOFIT webinars for external public are also in the coming agenda with the support of the project partners and the pilot owners. For more information about the different events attendance, results and webinars, please access the project website periodically. 

During the rest of the project until October 2022, the pending tasks regarding monitoring, implementation of GEOBIM platform for some of the pilots, the life cycle cost, and social impact analysis will be completed.  

Thanks for this fruitful meeting and let’s go for the final straight! 

The European Shallow Geothermal Days took place on 14 to 15 June 2022 at the Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya (ICGC) in Catalonia, Spain. Taking the opportunity to celebrate the ninth general assembly of the GEOFIT project in Sant Cugat (Barcelona), the GEOFIT Consortium attended the event during the 14^th of June sessions.  

GEOFIT is now in the last stages of commissioning in the demo sites and the event has represented an opportunity to demonstrate the progress in geothermal systems for cooling and heating in retrofitted buildings. It was possible to show the different aspects covered by the project like, improved drilling technologies, the different geothermal energy extraction and ground source heat pumps, thermal analysis, data gathering, radar monitoring of buildings, digital management, and efficiency of the systems. 

Shallow geothermal energy represents a well-developed, non-volatile and clean technology for providing efficient heating and cooling across Europe. It is often associated with the use of ground source heat pumps but offers a wide range of applications such as geo-cooling or seasonal heat storage. Still, it is widely considered as a niche technology, however it has the potential to become a powerful game changer towards a decarbonized heating and cooling technology. The next decade from 2021 until 2030 is crucial to fulfil the SDGs defined in the “Clean Energy for all Europeans” initiative of the European Commission. All these aspects are covered by GEOFIT project, and it was possible to show these advances to the geothermal community. 

On behalf of the European Commission, the event connected remotely with the DG Energy Representatives, Eva Hoos and Eric Lecomte, who explained the REPowerEU (EU Revolution on Energy Plan) to develop geothermal heating and cooling, and the updated regulatory framework: Renewable Energy RES Directive. 

On behalf of the GEOFIT Consortium, Henk Witte, from Groenholland, presented the main project’s results in the afternoon session and it was possible to exchange this experience together with other related European projects and initiatives like GEO4CIVHIC, and leading entities and organizations in the geothermal technologies like GPC IP GEOFLUID, Geological Survey of Austria, DCL GEOENERGY – ITECON, among others. 

COMET Global Innovation as leader of the communication activities of the project, brought different communication materials to participate in the Poster presentations, including the project videos and other printed material. 

The Shallow Geothermal Energy Days was aimed at connecting policy makers to scientists, to promote and discuss opportunities for boosting this technology in the upcoming decade. 

GEOFIT was one of the exhibitors at the GeoTHERM, held on June 2^nd & 3^rd, 2022, in Offenburg (Germany). This expo & congress represents one of the final dissemination and exploitation actions of the project, which will end October this year. GEOFIT showcased its main innovations, from heat exchangers and heat pumps to heating and cooling systems.

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