Assessment of Geothermal Heat Provision from Deep Sedimentary Aquifers in Berlin/Germany: A Case Study

Abstract

Regions of active volcanism offer high-enthalpic production rates at comparably low development costs, but most of the developed and highly energy-consuming countries do not possess such geothermal resources. Even here, the crust's heat potential is enormous and may be mined for direct heating or energy conversion purposes, but the potential is largely undeveloped for different reasons: Limited geological data inducing development risks, technological challenges, high invest and limited public reception. This situation holds true for the low-enthalpic hydrothermal heat reservoirs of the Northeastern German Basin and specifically for the city of Berlin, capital of Germany. This contribution aims at illustrating the thermal power of hydrothermal heat plants at urban scale for the Berlin region. For this purpose, we select a specific plant design and evaluate the heat production capacity of Post-Permian reservoir units (Middle Buntsandstein) based on a regional-scale structural model and statistically derived geohydraulic model parameter of the Northeast German basin, see Kastner et al. (2014) for the details of the underlaying model. In this contribution we discuss the model results for the campus of the Technical University of Berlin, which may serve as a show case .