Geology of the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous geothermal aquifers in the West Netherlands Basin - An overview

In the past 10 years the mature hydrocarbon province the West Netherlands Basin has hosted rapidly expanding geothermal development. Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous strata from which gas and oil had been produced since the 1950s became targets for geothermal exploitation. The extensive publicly available subsurface data including seismic...

Towards optimisation of geothermal heat recovery: An example from the West Netherlands Basin

The Netherlands experienced the fastest European expansion of geothermal energy exploitation in the past decade. The first Dutch geothermal sites proved that Hot Sedimentary Aquifers exploitation can play an important role in a future low-carbon energy mix. In this study, we estimate that with the expansion rate of the past four years,...

Doublet deployment strategies for geothermal Hot Sedimentary Aquifer exploitation: Application to the Lower Cretaceous Nieuwerkerk Formation in the West Netherlands Basin

Huge amounts of heat are stored in sedimentary aquifers in the Dutch subsurface. The amount of heat would be sufficient to provide our national heat demand for decades without any greenhouse gas emissions. Exploitation of this type of resource started some 10 years ago in the Netherlands. In 2016, 16 geothermal doublet systems had been installed...

An evaluation of interferences in heat production from low enthalpy geothermal doublets systems

Required distance between doublet systems in low enthalpy geothermal heat exploitation is often not fully elucidated. The required distance aims to prevent negative interference influencing the utilisation efficiency of doublet systems. Currently production licence areas are often issued based on the expected extent of the reinjected cold...

The relation between well spacing and Net Present Value in fluvial Hot Sedimentary Aquifer geothermal doublets: a West Netherlands Basin case study

This paper analyzes the relation between well spacing and Net Present Value of a Hot Sedimentary Aquifer geothermal doublet. First, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to evaluate the effect of uncertainty of geological and production parameters on the Net present Value. Second a finite-element approach is utilized to study the effect of...

The influence of fluvial reservoir architecture on geothermal energy production in Hot Sedimentary Aquifers

Currently six geothermal doublets are realized in the WNB. Five of these doublets target the same Lower Cretaceous fluvial sandstone interval, the Nieuwerkerk Formation. About 40 exploration licences are granted. Many of them also have sandstones in the same fluvial interval, the Nieuwerkerk Formation as a target. To successfully and efficiently...