When it rains It penetrates aquifers, porous rock formations, or loose materials such as sand and gravel. For thousands of years, humans have dug these fluid belts to make drinking water. But there is growing interest in another clever use for these in-ground pools. It is Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES).
Batteries hold energy for later use. Aquifers can be utilized to do similar things. The insulating properties of the earth can be used to store thermal energy and transfer it to and from buildings above ground. The temperature of the water in the aquifer tends to be fairly stable. This provided a way to use the energy stored in the water to heat and cool nearby structures, instead of burning natural gas in a furnace or using fossil fuel-derived electricity to run an air conditioner. increase.
The ATES system consists of two separate wells (one hot and one cold) that run between the surface and the underlying aquifer. In winter, groundwater is pumped from a warm well at about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and passed through heat exchangers. Combined with a heat pump, this process extracts heat from the groundwater and keeps the structure warm inside.
The cooled groundwater is then pumped into a second well. This will create a cool pool of water at about 45 degrees F for your pump. outside Cools the building in the summer. Martin Bloemendal, a hydrogeologist studying his ATES at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, said: “And in winter, we extract from warm wells.” Because the groundwater is reused rather than consumed, this process alternates indefinitely as the seasons progress. The system can even utilize brackish or polluted aquifers that are not available as potable water.
Water pumps and other equipment run on renewable energy such as solar and wind, so this highly efficient energy storage reduces demand for fossil fuels and releases more carbon into the atmosphere. can prevent Heating and cooling account for one-third of his energy consumption in the US and half of it in Europe.In fact, a new article in the journal applied energy found that ATES could reduce the use of natural gas and electricity in heating and cooling US homes and businesses by 40%.
This is a way of storing vast amounts of energy for long periods of time, like underground batteries that are always available. “Local cities can store heat and cold, and now we don’t have to pay for it later,” said Eric Burns, leader of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geothermal Resources Exploration Project. increase. (USGS is part of a new international consortium investigating geothermal energy on a city scale.) “The great thing about it is that it doesn’t require minerals as important as batteries.”
This technology is ideal for large buildings such as hospitals or clusters of buildings such as university campuses, as it can share dedicated facilities for wells and other equipment. This is especially effective during periods of high demand on the grid. In the United States, demand spikes on late summer afternoons when people turn on energy-hungry AC units. ATES uses much less power, which reduces the load on the grid and helps avoid crashes. If these systems were backed up not only by solar or wind energy, but also by a distributed network of lithium-ion batteries, they could be completely resilient to power outages.
