Well fields for Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage; groundwater as a storage medium for renewable energy

摘要

Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) is a technology that uses groundwater as a storage medium for renewable energy. With ATES, available summer heat is stored in an aquifer for heating in winter and available winter cold is stored for cooling in summer. This paper addresses some aspects of well field design for ATES. For a given location and a given set of project data, such as required flow and water volume, there are still many degrees of freedom to design an ATES system. The most important degrees of freedom are: (1) aquifer depth; (2) length of the screen; (3) distance between the warm and cold wells; (4) angle of the line connecting the wells with the direction of the regional flow; (5) positioning of multiple cold and warm wells with respect to each other. These design parameters can be used to optimize an ATES for the following goals: (1) to reduce costs; (2) to improve the thermal efficiency and (3) to reduce the environmental impact. This paper presents some practical guidelines and examples to optimize a well field configuration for ATES based on our experiences with Dutch ATES projects. Some of these guidelines may also be applicable for other groundwater recharge technologies where groundwater is injected and produced simultaneously.