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Welcome to our page with data for The Netherlands

ELECTRICITY GENERATION
 
No geothermal power installations have been reported for The Netherlands.

Dutch interest in geothermal energy is something quite new, practically starting from scratch since 2005. The Oil&Gas industry is very active in the country, bringing drilling and geological expertise in the local geothermal sector. A pilot binary project is under feasibility study.

Taken from Ruggero Bertani’s paper, " Geothermal Power Generation in the World 2005–2010 Update Report ", published in Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2010, Bali, Indonesia, 25-29 April 2010.  

 

DIRECT USES
 
Total thermal installed capacity in MWt:
1,410.3
Direct use in TJ/year
 10,699.4
Direct use in GWh/year
2,972.3
Capacity factor
0.24
 

Originally the object of drilling energy wells in the country was to store solar energy for space heating in winter. Later, this application broadened to the storage of thermal energy (both heat and cold) from other sources and to include geothermal heat pumps. The R&D of the early applications in the 1980s was focused on large scale applications such as commercial buildings rather than residential houses. Almost all of these early projects used ground water wells to store and extract thermal energy. In the late 1990s, borehole heat exchangers began to pay a more important role with geothermal heat pumps.

At present, most of the geothermal heat pumps projects are using vertical borehole heat exchangers, with over 10,000 of these in operation. Most are small scale applications such as for single family houses or small office and commercial buildings. Systems in family homes are designed for the heating load, whereas in commercial/office building the design is for both heating and cooling. Most projects use aquifer storage for both heating and cooling, with heat pump capacities in the 50 to 100 kWt range, and using ground water flow rates at less than 10 m3/hr (as no permits are need up to this rate). In Amsterdam about 1,200 large systems are installed with heat pump capacities around 1,000 kWt in some cases extracting over 250 m3/hr from a single well. Direct groundwater cooling is also practiced with the larger projects.

The estimated capacity and use of geothermal heat pumps in the country is

175 MWt and 1,012.6 TJ/yr for the smaller units (average 7 kWt) and
1,219.3 MWt and 9,407.2 TJ/yr for the larger units (average 1,006 kWt)
for a total of 1,394.30 MWt and 10,419.80 TJ/yr.
In addition there is 5.83 MWt and 89.7 TJ/yr for district heating and
10.13 MWt and 189.9 TJ/yr for greenhouse heating.

The total for the country is 1,410.26 MWt and 10,699.40 TJ/yr.

Taken from the paper by John W. Lund, Derek H. Freeston, and Tonya L. Boyd: "Direct Utilization of Geothermal Energy 2010 Worldwide Review"; published in Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2010, Bali, Indonesia, 25-29 April 2010