“Heat In Place” assessments for Berlin/Brandenburg’s deep geothermal potential

Geologically located in the Northeast German Basin, Berlin and most parts of Brandenburg are known to be potentially suitable for deep geothermal energy usage. This source of energy is not yet well-established in the area. However, regarding Germany’s transition towards climate-friendly and regional energy solutions, the energy demand from renewables is rapidly increasing. Thus, geothermal exploration and assessing geothermal potential is significant. We assess “Heat In Place” (HIP) as quintessential part of the geothermal potential for a series of litho-stratigraphic units for Berlin and Brandenburg.

Geothermal potential is defined as considering characteristics of a specific geothermal plant and/or the geological reservoir. We concentrate on the latter geological aspects and take a 3D geological and two different 3D thermal models of Brandenburg as basis for the HIP calculations. This HIP approach corresponds to a volumetric quantification of contained energy within 16 litho-stratigraphic units, each taking variable thickness, mean temperature, porosity, density, and specific heat capacity into account. This results in a series of new geothermal potential maps derived from different thermal models: Firstly, conductive heat transport, and secondly, coupled thermal-hydraulic simulations. We aim at deepening the understanding of HIP maps for geothermal power plant site decision making by showing how the calculated heat varies between those two modelling approaches, and different parameter estimates.