Alderney 5 Energy Project - Innovative Technology - First time this particular Geothermal technology has been used anywhere in the world!
STATE OF THE ART COOLING TECHNOLOGY
The GeoEnergy Vault is the the heart of a revolutionary geothermal cold storage system. Below are titanium heat exchangers used to extract cold energy from the Halifax harbour in the wintertime. This cold energy is stored for 7 months in a geothermal borehole field underneath the adjacent parking lot. This seawater cooling and cold storage system is used to provide 100% renewable energy for the air conditioning of five major buildings on the Dartmouth waterfront.
The geothermal energy storage system has 85 boreholes. Each has a diameter of 4 ½ inches and is 500 feet deep. The geothermal energy storage system uses a new design of borehole that is 300% more efficient than traditional U-tube boreholes. This breakthrough borehole design is the key that enables cold energy to be stored in the rock mass, and then used directly for air conditioning without using heat pumps.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The seawater cooling and geothermal energy storage system is a fairly simple concept. In essence the geothermal energy system acts as a battery, but instead of electricity cold energy is stored. This geothermal cold ‘battery’ uses a volume of rock the size of a 40 storey building and over 30 km of piping underground! Shown in the diagrams below are simplified versions of a typical borehole in charging and discharging modes.
