Renewable energy, particularly from photovoltaics, is becoming increasingly prominent in the Czech Republic. However, this type of energy is heavily weather-dependent: overproduction is common in the summer months while production in winter cannot meet the demand of heat pumps in residential applications. This contributes to high price volatility in the energy market and decreases the profitability of domestic installations. Underground thermal energy storage may become crucial to regulate the market and constitute an affordable way to store summer energy overflows in the form of heat, to be used in wintertime to heat building at a fraction of the price. This thesis work will explore the current state of the art in underground thermal energy storage technologies for residential or district applications and propose a modelling framework to understant the efficiency of such applications in the present and future climate conditions of the Czech Republic.
Preliminary scope of work in English
Renewable energy, particularly from photovoltaics, is becoming increasingly prominent in the Czech Republic. However, this type of energy is heavily weather-dependent: overproduction is common in the summer months while production in winter cannot meet the demand of heat pumps in residential applications. This contributes to high price volatility in the energy market and decreases the profitability of domestic installations. Underground thermal energy storage may become crucial to regulate the market and constitute an affordable way to store summer energy overflows in the form of heat, to be used in wintertime to heat building at a fraction of the price. This thesis work will explore the current state of the art in underground thermal energy storage technologies for residential or district applications and propose a modelling framework to understant the efficiency of such applications in the present and future climate conditions of the Czech Republic.
