INFORMATION

Geothermal Community Heat technology and Transfer

The objective of this project is to demonstrate a small-scale 4th generation district heating (4GDH) in Limerick, Ireland, comprising a cluster of buildings and employing a district loop positioned to turn to geo-sourced heat-pumping. The target geo-source is groundwater communicating with the River Shannon to establish a heat-extraction system for the river and associated estuary. This geo-target will provide both efficiency and noise-reduction benefits to the district and a method of combating climate-change-warming of the estuary. 

As part of the objectives, using wind power or other intermittent energy sources to aliment the heat pumps will be studied to contribute to grid stabilisation. The 4GDH micro-district system will be modelled and designed to be coupled with the geo-fluid loop to optimise heat extraction from low-temperature sources.

Main Coordinator:

Valentina Zaccaria
Mälardalen University, Sweden