FlexGeo will provide significant innovations for the European geothermal sector by focusing on various geological and socio-demographic settings, covering shallow, medium and deep geothermal. The following figure visualizes the key areas being addressed within the FlexGeo project.

In the core concept, the FlexGeo approach relies on the innovative combination of the modular reversible ORC unit with UTES system and advanced smart control. This enables the provision of flexibility services to the grid and reaction to the economic market signals over the whole year, while still ensuring the supply of the current heating demand.

For this purpose, advanced control strategies based on Artificial intelligence, using concepts such as reinforcement learning, will maximize the flexibility of ORC and HTHP and improve the system and component specific monitoring and maintenance. This will also lead to a significant increase in the flexibility capacities of smart thermal grids. Reduced ramp up time (Primary control reserve). Furthermore, the rev. ORC will provide twice its installed capacity for secondary control reserve. As shown below, the FlexGeo approach results in a significant enhancement of the flexibility potential compared to the current state-of-the-art.

Also, a wide range of other numerical tools will be used to assess and optimize the environmental impact & cost-effectiveness of FlexGeo’s solutions (equipment and system lifecycle assessment and environmental impact assessment, detailed thermo-economic evaluation & optimization).