Deutschen Erdwärme successfully completes early exploration campaign for German project

Truck of DMT during the study at Waghäusel-Philippsburg (source: Deutsche Erdwärme)

Alexander Richter 11 Dec 2019

German geothermal developer Deutschen Erdwärme has announced that the company has successfully completed early exploration work for its geothermal project Waghäusel-Philippsburg two weeks earlier than planned. With the campaign the company was conducting measurements to explore the underground in search of geothermal resources in the region.

The last of a total of more than 3,700 vibration points was approached and the last measurement was made in the evening of Monday this week. Within only 33 days an area of ??approx. 65 km 2 could be examined in detail and with high resolution using state-of-the-art technology.

“Decisive factors for the smooth implementation of the ambitious measuring program were several aspects”, says the project manager of Deutsche Erdwärme. Ulrich Lotz. “The broad acceptance of the measurements by the residents, the support from the administrations and at the end also the stable weather contributed decisively to the success in addition to the great performance of our measuring service manager, the company DMT GmbH & Co. KG. Lotz on. Overall, more than 80% of the property owners surveyed had agreed to use their land and paths.

The geothermal measurements were even part of the school lessons. 10th grade students of the Copernicus Gymnasium in Philippsburg were informed in detail about the geothermal energy and, of course, the measurements by project manager Ulrich Lotz. The students make use of the opportunity to prepare themselves for the following week’s class work on the topic of geothermal energy through many technical questions. “It’s nice to see that geothermal energy is already an integral part of the physics class and the young people are really interested in the topic,” Dr. Lotz on that experience.

Professors, students and staff of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Darmstadt also took the rare opportunity to visit the measurement work on site. “We are grateful for the patience of the local residents, who had to put up with some nuisance from the measuring vehicles on one day or the other when the measuring vehicles were driving over land and through the villages,” explains Herbert Pohl, one of the founders of Deutsche Erdwärme.

As a next step, the designed ground microphones are collected and the recorded measurement data are read out. Then it goes to the evaluation of the data. The results should be available early next summer.

Deutsche Erdwärme is expecting attractive thermal water reservoirs for the production of renewable energy from geothermal energy in the Waghäusel-Philippsburg area. The exact knowledge of the underground is an important building block for a safe and successful development of the reservoirs.

Source: Company release by email