PERSPECTIVES OF GEOTHERMAL ENERGY USE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC – ESTIMATIONS FROM NUMERICAL MODELLING

This contribution summarizes selected results from numerical modelling of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), adapted to geological conditions in the Czech Republic (CZE). The work was a part of the RINGEN project [14], which has been established to accelerate the progress of geothermal energy use in CZE. Our team from the Technical University in Liberec (TUL) provides the software solution for the estimation of the deep geothermal exchanger behaviour.

A coupled thermo-hydraulic numerical model has been implemented in software Flow123d developed in TUL [2], alongside the COMSOL Multiphysics software [6], serving as a benchmark. The geometry of the fracture network, which constitutes the deep geothermal exchanger, is stochastically generated by our own script in the Python language.

The contribution shows scenarios of various geothermal exchanger depths and set ups, various scaling (from regional to local scale) or operational regimes. The model results have been used as quantitative estimations of the exchanger output and working life, adapted to the (probable) geologic properties at the Litoměřice site, which is one of the most promising areas in CZE. The results are interpreted with aim to determine (predict) a long-term sustainability of the energy mining based on proposed working regime designs.