We sometimes pitch Brigid as an “artificial geothermal facility”, because is under the ground, and spits out a continuous stream of hot steam.
Remind me to write a post on why this is a better idea than using a natural geothermal source, like Iceland is successfully doing.
But here’s another link on geothermal heat.
Brigid acquired a few offices on ye olde dorm terrain of SCK,
a matter for Brigid personnel to have a Musk-style working-eating-sleeping hub on walking distance to the SCK Class-1 facility to cooperate smoothly.
Visiting us at the infamous Boeretang address, you may stumble into VITO.
Is VITO part of SCK? No, it’s the Flemish non-nuclear counter part of the Federal nuclear SCK. They research water treatment, air quality measurements, household waste sorting, battery testing…
So what are they doing on the SCK nuclear terrain? Good question.
The SCK terrain obviously requires a strong security level, at high cost. VITO needs nothing of the sort.
Partial answer: since the downfall of nuclear research, part of the SCK personnel was kindly shifted to VITO, and part of the deal was that the SCK privileges be kept (such as the corporate restaurant, sports facilities, golf,…). Makes sense, from some angle.
Or maybe is was the synergy in some of the equipment, les excuses sont faites pour s’en servir.
So what is VITO doing on energy? Nothing, besides deep geothermal heat, trying to pump 125 C water from 3 to 5 km deep, and claiming “it could even be used to generate energy if it’s hot enough”. We suppose they mean “electricity” iso “energy”.
And no, 125 C is not nearly hot enough to generate electricity, or any other industrial application, with any acceptable efficiency. Carnot is and will always be a bitch.
The main reason for this geo research is the proximity of the Smet drilling company (they got rich by water well drilling) and some government funding lying around.
VITO also proposed to raise a few wind turbines on the SCK terrain, a matter of getting some street credibility in the
green-ish community. Fortunately, this project did not pass the political approval it required because of funding, obviously. Frankly, they would be in the way of new reactor buildings.
So VITO has had this geothermal heat pet project for many, many years. It involves pumping up hot water from the Kempen underground, and using that in a heating network to supply heating to the SCK, Belgoprocess, VITO and the entire SCK dorm site.
That includes our brand new Brigid offices.
To our surprise, our new office building we purchased remained legally tied to both SCK and VITO. Weird. You sell, pick up the money, but still have rights to enforce constraints. The building was also equipped with a number of solar PV cells and the appropriate convertors. That was not in the original specs, and added without consent and … at no increased cost. Euh, thanks, I guess? Occam’s assumption is that the contractor needed to green wash the project in view of some funding? And so it also included the mandatory VITO geo heat. Interesting: free, green heating. So how does this look in practice? And if you intend to buy a building on the SCK site, how much will the heating and sanitary hot water ultimately cost?
Turns out the cost was not yet determined at the time we were signing purchase contracts. Normally we would never sign a blanc sheet, but the goal of being on-site was paramount, and time flies. The main reason of the missing cost computation is that the geo part is not yet operational (or better no longer operational after exploding return pipes) after all these years, on VITO’s primary Balmatt test site.
So we predicted how the price would be calculated, and darn, didn’t we hit it again: if you don’t know the cost of your geo source, Brigid figured there’s three (3!) ways VITO could reason:
- if you hope and estimate the geo cost is really low, you’d better not tell anyone, but sell at gas price, and maybe a bit more, because, you know, it’s green.
- if it slowly starts to dawn that the cost is really higher than gas, sell it at real cost plus markup, and explain that it’s more expensive, because, you know, it’s green.
- if the geo pump doesn’t work at all, just replace the geo heat source by a standard gas furnace, and compute the cost as gas cost plus thermal losses in the pipes, and maybe some additional fee for being green (which you are not, to be clear).
Guess what we got in the end? Number 3, right.
So now VITO is simply burning gas some miles off-site, hiring another company to transport the heat to the terrain,
with yet another company operating a massive heat pump in every building, and yet another company to distribute the heat inside the building using a complex Giacomini heat exchanger with a drowsy calorie meter, and finally sending hot water into classical CV radiators of yet another company, under shaggy control of a thermostate of the latter company. Classical hi-T radiators, because installing floor heating was not realistic while renovating our 1958 building, unless you risk to bang your head into the low ceiling, which is low to accomodate the mandatory ventilation system.
Riddle of the day: if your CV is cold in the morning, who-ya-gonna-call? Ghost busters! Short answer: I fixed it myself by rewiring the exchange box, but then again, me bein’ an Unguneer.
And there’s the other elephant: the big local heat pump consumes roughly 1/4 of it’s total power in the form of additional electricity, of which the cost is not accounted for in the VITO setup, but nonetheless is being payed by the residents.
And on top of that: all digital electricity meters are located in the hallway iso in the units, with the P1 ports thus unaccessible for future energy management.
The final result is that we are burning gas on a distance, transporting heat over miles and thus loosing efficiency by the meter, and still paying a multiple of the normal gas bill. How this is a solution to any ecological problem escapes me.
The VITO web site does not show signs of life after 2023. It seems the main activity on the Balmatt test site now is seismic research. Huh? We suppose this became a topic unexpectedly, when trying to pump the salt slurry back into the underground. (I forgot to mention that the hot water is really not water but a mildly radioactive corrosive salt slurry. And so it will never work.)
We think it is a particularly bad idea to INVOKE seismic activity in a otherwise seismic corpse underground by drilling and pumping in the direct vicinity of the Hades shaft, the nuclear cemeteries at Belgoprocess and NIRAS, and two ancient but operational nuclear reactors BR1 and BR2, which are actually still producing a significant amount of medical and industrial isotopes, and were never designed to tolerate seismic activity.
Is VITO-Balmatt/SCK a stand-alone f*ck up, like first of a kind, children’s teething problem? No way. Fluvius manages to use the same setup in a brand new KMO terrain De Kluis in Hoogstraten, obliging every company (50 or so) to connect to the heating network. The pump did not work, does not work, will never work, so Fluvius now simply burns gas and charges surplus gas prices. Since these companies also signed a blind check when engaging on the new terrain, this ultimately resulted in a legal conflict with VOKA about the unacceptable energy cost. While waiting years for a swift legal settlement, the companies now face fines for not being able to report on energy efficiency.
Good reads:
- https://www.made-in.be/kempen/voka-vraagt-duurzame-oplossing-voor-warmtenet-op-bedrijventerrein-de-kluis/
- https://www.voka.be/nieuws/mk/voka-groen-warmtenet-op-de-kluis-levert-enkel-rode-energiefacturen-op
- https://www.hln.be/hoogstraten/groen-warmtenet-in-hoogstraten-blijkt-voorlopig-een-mislukking-kosten-zijn-serieus-gestegen~a6da070c/
Flemish government credo: “Wat we zelf doen, doen we beter.” Not.
More on this (observe the dates of publication and the promises)
- https://www.stora.org/node/377
- https://kempenswarmtebedrijf.be
- https://bouwkroniek.be/duurzaamheid/diepe-geothermie-project-vito-eind-dit-jaar-succesvol-afgerond-14099
- https://vilt.be/nl/nieuws/vito-ziet-mooie-toekomst-voor-geothermie
- https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/milieu-energie/kempense-ondernemers-pompen-miljoenen-in-eerste-belgisch-geothermiebedrijf/10135765.html
Home assignment: find out if these people are still happy, if you happen to know them, I have no clue.
- https://www.essenscia.be/janssen-pharmaceutica-huldigt-diepe-geothermiecentrale-in/#:~:text=Janssen%20Pharmaceutica%20heeft%20op%20haar,duurzame%20energiebron%20voor%20haar%20bedrijfsactiviteiten.