European project "Cheap-GSHPs": installation and monitoring of newly designed helicoidal ground source heat exchanger on the German test site

Nowadays, the energy price fluctuations and the economic crisis are jeopardizing the development and diffusion of renewable technologies and sources. With the aim of both reducing the overall costs of shallow geothermal systems and improving their installation safety, an European project has took place recently, under the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The acronym of the mentioned project is Cheap-GSHPs, meaning "cheap and efficient application of reliable ground source heat exchangers and pumps"; the Cheap-GSHPs project involves 17 partners among 9 European countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Spain and Switzerland. In order to achieve the planned targets, a holistic approach is adopted, where all involved elements that take part of shallow geothermal activities are here integrated. In order to reduce the specific costs of geothermal installations, some newly designed geometries of heat basket-type ground source heat exchanger (GSHE) are modified drastically to receive a better performance of the geothermal installation. Within the sector of very shallow geothermal systems, these new developments are also tested on six representative demonstration sites around Europe. At the German test site in Northern Bavaria, four heat basket-type GSHEs are installed and equipped with certain monitoring systems (moisture, two different temperature sensors) and various backfilling materials of different grain size classes. The different installations will be tested for 12 months to evaluate the best combination of the newly designed heat basket-type GSHE and corresponding backfilling material mixture.